Happy New Year!  For folks in Japan, the new year means “three lazy days,” or Shogatsu, the New Year Festival.  It is a time to lay around, eat cake, visit family and friends, and generally renew and reflect.  I love lazy days!  I feel like a luxurious cat, basking in my own cozy puddle of comfort, tending to my needs and staying unhurried.  This is the place of poetry, too, I think—how often does some great insight or powerful emotion come to you when your brain isn’t active solving problems and completing tasks?  Letting the brain get lazy means letting whatever is buried in there come into view and surface and suddenly crack! Like lightning in your temples—a flash of energy appearing out of nowhere to be grounded in the whole.

As we head into our third year of the Big Forest Utakai (poetry gathering) at Abide, I’m reflecting on all the friendships made, all the smiles shared over the steam of soup, and all the beautiful moments created by people letting their hearts go off leash for awhile and wander into the wilderness of true feeling.  The five line poems created over this span have all the flavors of family, love and loss, simple joys, profound understanding, and deep connection with the earth and other living things.  Please feel welcome after your lazy days to join us in a celebration of free hearts singing together in full expression—we’d love to have you!!

Gogyohka is a poetic from created by Enta Kusakabe of Japan. Each poem contains five lines, and you use your breath as a guide for the length of the line. Gogyohka are short, sweet, free, creative expressions that have the power to help you process big things, deep things, powerful things into language. 

For this workshop, no writing experience is required. There will be no critical evaluation, as this is all about finding freedom in expression. We'll gather to write, share, listen, and eat yummy soup and bread. 

Sliding scale $20 / 25 / 30

Saturday, January 18th

7 - 9 pm

At Abide on Larchmere