Volume V, Issue 34 August 22, 2016 Dear ,
I love to look back at group photos from previous retreats and classes. This
one from the November 2014 coastal writing retreat, like all the others, is luminous with "writing angels"—WordPlayers who write like angels and also do much good in their corners of the world.
And one of them—Richard
Allen Taylor—has been writing about angels in and out of Wordplay retreats for quite some time now. To pull a word from the title of his new collection of angel poems, the experience of hearing first drafts of a number of them in various WordPlay retreats has been luminous. Richard's vision of angels is refreshing, encompassing, and often laced with delightful humor. He's broadened my perspective of, not only what angels can look like, but also the kind of work they can
do..
I'm quite excited that Richard's book will be published very soon, and that there's an opportunity to get the book for $8 (as opposed to $14) for a limited time. I've ordered my copy, and I can't wait to read it. If
you'd like to learn more and/or order your own copy, here's the link:
It's a joy
to feature Richard and his upcoming book this week! I hope you enjoy the sample poem he was kind enough to share, as well as his words about writing. (Richard is a past president of the Charlotte Writer's Club, and holds an MFA in poetry; he's a fine teacher of poetry in his own right.)
Love and luminosity, Maureen
P.S. While this November's regular Coastal Writing Retreat is full, there are still a few spots left in the Coastal Retreat that focuses on memoir. I'd love to have you! Details here. Upcoming WordPlay
(Fulfilling Writing Dreams & Goals; Creating New Writing; Revising & Polishing Your Writing)
This
class is designed to fulfill your writing dreams and projects. You’ll set goals and support structures and watch your writing flow! You’ll also get feedback on your work (any genre) and learn revision tools and methods. Each week, writing prompts will generate material for new writing or further a piece in process, whatever your preferred genre. Through examples of accomplished writers, you’ll learn techniques to aid you right where you are in the process.
* We have Tuesday evening and
Wednesday morning classes available
WHERE: South Charlotte area (Tuesday evenings) OR Covenant Presbyterian Recreation Center, 1000 E. Morehead, Charlotte, NC 28204 (Wednesday mornings)
WHEN: Tuesday evenings OR Wednesday mornings, starting in September. COST: $419 for 12 sessions
TO REGISTER: Please email us at info@wordplaynow.com if interested. We currently
have a waiting list and would be happy to add your name to it.
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THE GIFT OF MEMOIR COASTAL WRITING RETREAT
(A Retreat Focusing on Memoir)
You’ll learn and practice engaging tools and techniques to retrieve and record your adventures,
loves, losses, successes, and more with ease and enjoyment, no matter where you are in the process.
$418 for the weekend beginning Friday, November 4th through Sunday, November 6th. Includes two nights’ lodging, two breakfasts and Saturday lunch (hotel tax and Saturday dinner at a local restaurant not included).
WHERE: The Sunset Inn, 9 North Shore Dr., Sunset Beach, NC 28468
WHEN: Friday, November 4 – Sunday, November 6, 2016* TO REGISTER: Contact the Sunset Inn at 888-575-1001 (if you would
like to handpick your room, view your choices here first, then call). Because the Inn is holding rooms for you, our participants, they are blocked off as unavailable online. Register soon by phone — this is a popular event and there are only 6 spaces available. The Inn will hold your reservation with a
credit card. *Also, please let the Inn know when you call if you are interested in the bonus opportunity to stay Sunday night, November 6th, at half price.
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DELICIOUS MEMORIES
(Writing about Food in Any and All Genres)
Food not only nurtures and sustains us, it’s a rich source of metaphor and memory! We’ll explore our connections with food as we write of when, where, what, with whom, how — and
even why — we ate! You can use your food writings to create a family cookbook, individual essays, stories, or poems, scenes in fiction or memoir, a food blog, etc. — or just for your own pleasure.
More WordPlay opportunities here. WordPlay Success Story
"I think that one of the reasons that Maureen is so good at what she does is that she has a knack for pulling the writing out of clients, writing that might not otherwise come out willingly, and there is a certain rush for the writer when that happens." Meet Richard Allen Taylor Richard Allen Taylor, photo by Phillip Pope Richard Allen Taylor, a native and resident of Charlotte, NC, is the author of two books of poetry, Something to Read on the Plane (2004) and Punching Through the Egg of Space (2010), both from Main Street Rag Publishing Company. His newest collection, Armed and Luminous, is forthcoming in 2016. Richard’s poems, articles and reviews have appeared in Rattle, Comstock Review, The Pedestal, Iodine Poetry Journal, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Asheville Poetry Review and South Carolina Review, among others, and various anthologies. Taylor currently serves as review editor for The Main Street Rag literary magazine and co-editor of
Kakalak, a journal of poetry and art featuring writers, artists and photographers of North and South Carolina. Taylor and his co-editors were honored by Central Piedmont Community College as the recipients of the 2016 Irene Honeycutt Legacy Award for service to the writing community. After retiring from his 44-year business career in 2013, Taylor earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte in 2015. He welcomes contact with other writers on Face Book (page name:
Richard Allen Taylor) or by email at rtaylor947@aol.com.
What Richard says about WordPlay
You asked for my success story, and the first thing that
occurs to me is that writing anything—good or bad—is itself a kind of success. Writing is hard, and we must be crazy to do it. So, I think writers in general and poets in particular are a bunch of crazy people who are driven to do what they do, usually for little or no money, because they love it, or maybe even because they hate it but are addicted to it, and can’t resist it. So, if you define success as overcoming obstacles or doing the things that are difficult, everyone who writes is
successful to some degree. I think that one of the reasons that Maureen is so good at what she does is that she has a knack for pulling the writing out of clients, writing that might not otherwise come out willingly, and there is a certain rush for the writer when that happens.
Thinking of my own writing history, I really can’t remember a time when writing was not an important part of my life.
To write well was always an advantage in every job I’ve held since college. I tend to discount that part of my writing experience because it was not what we would call “creative,” but more oriented toward things like business reports and correspondence, newsletter articles, training manuals, helping executives with their speeches, and so on, but, if I were able to put a number on what writing paid me over the forty-four years of my business career, I’d estimate about ten percent of my lifetime
earnings came directly or indirectly from writing.
I had some false starts as far as poetry was concerned. I dabbled in it when I was in my late 20s and early 30s, wrote some really bad poetry, and abandoned it completely when I decided that I had no talent for it and there was no money in it. My interest in poetry reignited in my early 50s, and with the encouragement of friends, I
picked up the pen again and started attending classes and workshops.
I met Maureen in about 2001, I think, when I was just getting back on the poetry horse that had thrown me off about twenty years before. She was leading a weekly poetry circle at the Barnes & Noble in my neighborhood. At the time, I had written some poems but hadn’t published any. I hired Maureen to help me with my writing,
and we worked one-on-one, mostly though emails, but sometimes over a cup of coffee, while she taught me some of the basics and suggested ways to improve. After a couple years of this, I had enough material for a decent chapbook, and she helped me to choose the poems for that collection and provided editing advice. That little book, Something to Read on the Plane, was a finalist in the Main Street Rag chapbook contest and was published in 2004. My second book, Punching Through the
Egg of Space, came out in 2010, and many of the poems in that book began as rough drafts in a Maureen Ryan Griffin workshop.
As Maureen’s business grew and my business career got busier, we spent less time together one-on-one, but I continued to attend her quarterly writing retreats, which always gave me a boost in the creativity department. All Maureen’s writing retreats are fun and
inspiring, but the one I enjoy the most is her Sunset Beach Retreat. I attend every November, and each time I do, I come home with several drafts that have the potential to become publishable, and they often do. After publishing somewhere around three hundred poems, I estimate that about one-fourth of them originated in Maureen’s sessions.
After retiring from my business career in 2013, I went back to school for an MFA in Creating Writing at Queen’s University of Charlotte. Technically, I’m qualified to teach, but I still go to Maureen for her teaching and inspiration whenever I can.
So, how do I measure my success? There are lots of poets who have published more, are
better-known, more respected by their peers, and some who have actually made money from poetry. I’ve already had my career, so I’m not in it for the money, obviously. I think my success story is that I’m happy writing poetry and book reviews, and being an editor. I’m happy to be one of those crazy people who keeps writing poetry even though it’s hard to do—and sometimes, because it’s hard to do—and I’m grateful to Maureen for pointing me down this crazy
road.
Featured Writing The Train to Redemption
by Richard Allen Taylor
I
almost miss it, but catch the last car,
find a window seat next to a woman who opens her bag of sewing— needles, pins, fabric spilling
over her knees—and what she’s sewing, I don’t know. She says nothing as I lean my head against the sad window, and watch the land scroll, trees waving like sword-grass in a rush of green infantry, charging the horizon until the sun sinks and pulls the sky down with it.
After an hour of darkness, the lights of Redemption appear and the woman hems while she hums, a tune I won’t name because it’s one of those that sticks in your head
and drives you crazy for hours, once you hear it. As the train approaches the station, the air in the car smells like apples and rain, and this
woman who has not spoken to me, but has the gift of threading her eyes with whatever the moment requires, stitches me with a look of forgiveness I didn’t know I needed.
Author commentary:
“Train to Redemption” began in a Maureen Ryan Griffin workshop several years ago, after reading Adam Zagajewski’s “To Go to Lvov,” a poem about the author’s musings on a train ride to his home town of Lvov, Poland. In a metaphorical sense, Zagajewski’s poem embraces the broader idea of going home in all the ways “going home” can mean. While my poem is
entirely different from Zagajewski’s, the poems do have two elements in common: a train and a piece of fruit. His poem mentions Lvov as being “quiet and pure as a peach.” The apple in my poem shows up often in Armed and Luminous as a sort of recurring reference to Adam and Eve and the story of creation. The woman on the train might be
an angel of forgiveness, or she might be an angel in the speaker’s imagination.
WordPlay Now! Writing
Prompt This is WordPlay—so why not revel in the power and
potential of one good word after another? This week, it's "angels."
PROMPT: Write about an encounter with an angel—real or imaginary, profound or playful, your own or anyone else's—defining "angel" in any way you like.
MAUREEN RYAN GRIFFIN, an award-winning poetry and nonfiction writer, is the author of Spinning Words into Gold, a Hands-On Guide to the Craft of Writing, a grief workbook entitled I Will Never Forget You, and three collections of poetry, Ten Thousand Cicadas Can't Be Wrong, This Scatter of Blossoms and When the Leaves Are in the Water. One of her long-held dreams came true in July of 2015 when Garrison Keillor read one of her poems on The Writer's Almanac. She believes, as author Julia Cameron says, "We are meant to midwife dreams for one another."
Maureen also believes that serious "word work" requires serious WordPlay, as play is how we humans best learn—and perform. What she loves best is witnessing all the other dreams that come true for her clients along the way. Language, when used with
intentionality and focus, is, after all, serious fuel for joy. Here's to yours! |
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