Three Sundays Series: Live and Recorded

POETRY: OUR INTIMATE HORIZON

The Everyday Art of Reading, Writing and Speaking Poetry

May 14th, 21st and 28th

10 - 11:15am Pacific Time

• check your local time •

Invitation to Three Sundays in May

Poetry might be the miracle art form we practice every day of our lives whether we are aware of it or not. Not all of us grow up from infancy practicing the art forms of painting, sculpture or music, but all of us grew intimately and from our very birth, learning the power of words and the magic of language when words first met and constellated together in such astonishing ways. Words were our horizon between self and other. A child learning the word ‘door’ for the first time is not describing something that lives only outside of themselves but experiencing everything inside them or outside their bodies that might be opened, leant against or closed against them. Poetry is the art of uniting the inner and the outer worlds and the practice of reading or writing it on a daily basis enables us to sustain that experience through all the many difficult thresholds of maturity in a human life.

Poetry and the poetic tradition can uncover the essential experience you learned so intimately when you first apprenticed to the miracle power of the right word at the right time; said in the right way.

All of us know the elemental power of the right word at the right time to break through every barrier or open a new vista of understanding; all of us know the confining imprisonment we feel when words are twisted away from their original intent, or remember all the ways they might have been used against us as children. As we grow older, often in protection, we begin to abstract ourselves away from the uniting, centering power of words, and begin to use them as insulation and a brake against entering the more scintillating experiences of living. Poetry is a way of reversing this retreat from the edge: a way of bringing our surrounding miracle reality alive in the very act of speaking, writing or reading.

Join David Whyte for Three Sundays in May, looking at the way poetry and the poetic tradition can uncover the essential experience you first learned so intimately when you first apprenticed to the miracle power of the right word at the right time; said in the right way. We will look at the way poetry can sustain the original visions, discoveries and transfigurative experiences of childhood into a mature adult life. We will explore poetry as the art of creating language against which we have no defenses; as a practice in which we overhear ourselves reading or saying the truth at last. We will look at the way almost all cultures have seen poetry as a break for freedom from the daily imprisonment of an abstracted and distracted life.

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We will look at:

The practice of reading, or memorizing just one line of poetry a day: a practice that can transform our future lives whether we consider ourselves poets or not.

The power of not speaking too early.

The power of allowing yourself not to have an opinion until the physical experience inside coincides with your outer articulation and understanding.

Articulation generated from the edge between ourselves and the world.

Understanding the wildness of reality demands an equally elemental wildness in our language: enlarging our lives by being more generous with our vocabulary.

The necessity for bringing vulnerability and robustness together in one word or one sentence.

The way that robust vulnerability enables us to make powerful invitations in our lives, to ourselves and to others.

The way words can both be a blessing to others in confirming them in their ways, or call out people publicly in their destructive behaviours.

The way impossibilities, fully articulated, stop being impossible.

The particular practices David uses and has used in his apprenticeship to the art.

The way that the good language and good articulation of poetry is a reward and a harvest in itself, enriching and nourishing the writer and the reader, the speaker and the listener.

Three Sundays Testimonials

These beautiful sessions have buoyed me so through the months - now nearly years - of this pandemic. Your words have spoken to me for many years (The House of Belonging is still my favorite, all the pages well worn and the binding frayed). Your choices of theme and poems always seemed divinely timed to what I needed to hear, or to ponder. My creativity has soared, and I have been inspired to let go of old wants and dreams that no longer fit, to be less "hard on myself for wanting what I want," and to really accept that I deserve to have the life I want.

M.G

Tremendous possibilities now in focus, realizing the wisdom behind thinking and living with the theme that no matter what, “ everything is still possible.” Can’t thank you enough. Every session gets better and better.

G.L.

Since I’ve followed your Sundays series beginning in January this year, I’ve gained perspective on why I’m still here (on the planet.) Because of illness and separation from family, I could not see beyond my own misery. Writing didn’t come easily UNTIL I stopped. Thank you for taking us deep into the inner journey. A new door has opened, actually it’s an old, old garden gate and my job was to untangle the overgrowth that was hiding it. Blessings!

P.M.

"Each time, I have been very moved by what you say and how you've said it. Thank you for being a voice of inspiration, kindness, acceptance, and honesty through this strangely beautiful and transformative time."

- Participant, Three Sundays Series

Thank you for these Sundays that you have been doing throughout the pandemic. They have held my heart and body and mind in such a gentle and honest embrace.

- J.N.

This is opening up some exciting possibilities!

- J.C.