CAConrad wants us to understand how real it is that 95% of poets stop writing when the demands of our lives take over. This is a workshop gathering and sharpening our tools to always stay attentive, to always be a poet who sees the creative viability of the world around us no matter what life throws at us.

If the poet Robert Desnos can write his final manuscript as a prisoner in Auschwitz the bar has been set high for any reasons we may imagine are in front of us to prevent our dedication to poetry. We will work together to construct writing rituals that create an “extreme present” for our writing, spaces where we get to focus on nothing but the hidden poems existing in the world where we stand. As the great living sage poet Alice Notley says, “Poetry’s so common hardly anyone can find it.” Rituals for poetry also reconnect us to one another and the natural cycles of life and help put an end to our alienation from the planet. NOW is the time to experience how the rituals for creating poems have the power to change us in ways we have yet to fully explore. I completely believe in the strength of poetry and so can you. At the end of the course, CA will send each student a set of questions about WHAT EXACTLY is going on in their lives and then build a ritual with them around those particular circumstances.