Presenter: Loren Niemi
First, this is a fun workshop. You actually walk around the hotel, outside, and the neighborhood, which can be a nice break from sitting in rooms. Some folks have walked in rain and snow, some just circled the lobby and bar. Either way you walk with a prompt sheet that gives you things to look and listen for that will be useful when it is time to make poems and stories. There are always surprises. There are almost always memories though often those memories are suggested by each other’s recounting of the experience.
Second, this is useful in your everyday life. Walking is good for your health. My doctor has repeatedly reminded me of that. Walking can be a kind of meditation. Take a step and another. Breathe. Look at the world. Listen. Let questions, images, ideas, memories float in and out as you walk. It is that simple and yet….
Here is a poem that came from a walk:
Fairy Ring
Walking along Minnehaha Creek
I stepped into a fairy ring
Not intentionally, but even if
It had been, I immediately
Stepped out again seeing the
Matted grasses swirled counter-
Clockwise, the mark of invisible
Feet dancing or a breeze twirling
Itself into a whirlwind.
I’ve heard enough stories
To know what tarrying does –
How seeing their lithe forms,
The too blue eye, the winsome
Smile, leads to no good as
A day in their time is
Years in mine or how when you
Finally ask to return home you can
Never get off the swift footed horse.
And standing I saw a flicker
Of something across that border and
A trilling of the sweetest bird
Song morning offered, though whether
Shadow, beast, or spirit, I could not
Tell though the very glimpse made
Me want to step in once more to
Embrace whatever would come as
I fell to the ground to consider magic.
A runner came by asking if I
Was all right while I knelt to touch
A pale capped mushroom marking
The edge. How could I say that
I was lucky to not have gone to another
Realm hand in hand with beauty?
So I said, it was merely a moment to
Catch my breath, then heard the sound
Of feet moving down the path.
Lastly, since it is a workshop about process you are under no obligation to finish a poem or story but everyone will start a poem and a story. Having conducted this workshop many times now I will say that I am impressed at how much good work is generated in the time we have available.
About Loren: Loren Niemi is an innovative storyteller with 40 years of creating, collecting and teaching stories that matter. He is a Fringe festival performer, published poet, author of “The New Book of Plots” on the use of narratives in oral and written forms and the co-author with Elizabeth Ellis of the critically acclaimed, “Inviting the Wolf In: Thinking About Difficult Stories”. In 2016 he received the National Storytelling Network’s Lifetime Achievement Award. www.lorenNiemistories.com
CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE 2019 SHARING THE FIRE CONFERENCE & FESTIVAL
