October 13th: Wise Words - When You Feel Your Life is Burning Up - Poetry as Firefighter, with Richard Osler

Join us Wednesday, October 13th at 1pm for Wise Words - When You Feel Your Life Is Burning Up – Poetry as Firefighter with Richard Osler.  This sessions are part of our Wise Words Program.  A unique writing and communication initiative for Seniors in all corners of our lovely province.  This program is Funded by the Government of Canada's New Horizons for Seniors Program.

In this 90 minute generative poetry session for writers/poets of all levels you will be given poems and prompts to help you discover how a poem can help you order the disorder you are feeling or have struggled with. And in that ordering you may be surprised with what you unpack and recognize. You might find something previously hidden from your awareness. Your poem might help you to start dousing your emotional fire.

To find what may be hidden from us when we are triggered or emotionally provoked! One way I know how to get to there is writing especially poetry. As Canadian poet Susan Musgrave says: It seems to me my poems know more than I do and are wiser than I am. That’s what’s so magic about writing.

And here’s another quote about the discovery a poem can be. This one from master American poet Marvin Bell: When I say that I myself do the unpacking by writing the poem, I mean simply that the writing of a poem is, for me, in the first place, an almost total act of abandon leading to discovery leading to recognition.

Richard Osler is a 70 year-old Canadian poet and long-term poetry blogger who has led generative poetry writing workshops and retreats in Canada and Italy, and now on Zoom, as well as twice-weekly generative poetry therapy workshops at a major mental health facility on southern Vancouver Island, B.C. Nothing in his previous life as a national business print journalist with the Financial Post, national business columnist on Canada’s CBC radio network and self-employed money manager would have suggested his current occupations. Richard has been short and long-listed for poetry awards in the U.S. and Canada and his poems are included in a number of Canadian poetry anthologies. In 2016 Quattro Books of Toronto published his first full-length collection, Hyaena Season and in 2012 Leaf Press published his chapbook Where the Water Lives. Richard’s blog and website: recoveringwords.com.

If you are uncomfortable signing in the first time, or need extra help to log-in, email us at hello@bcwriters.ca and one of our staff will touch base with you.

Register here and a link will be sent to you. When it's time for the event, click on the link to join the live Zoom event. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Digital Doors Open at 1245pm! (Pacific Time)