Welcome

Welcome to the 2013 Poetry workshop, Thessaloniki and Thassos. This workshop meets under a pergola with a view of the Aegean, or it meets in a café near the water's edge, or one overlooking a marble quarry. We take our breaks in the water. Our poems feast on the poems of the ancient and modern Greeks, and draw from the light around us, and the full sails. When we have finished talking and writing, we go out with Stomatis on his boat to catch the fish we might have for dinner. In the evenings, we listen to poetry read to us near an olive grove, and then we feast and dance in circles to Greek songs. Sometimes we are up very late, lighting fires on the beach, so in the morning we have our tea and coffee first, with cheese and hard rolls and yoghurt under the grape leaves. In the late afternoons we learn a little Greek, or we write in our notebooks or float in the water looking up at the small clouds. We write a lot without worrying about whether or not the writing is “good.” We know that whether it is as yet “good” or not, it is the seed of something, or it is what we had to have written before we could write something else. We play with our poems and move things around in them. We let some words go. They go, they come back. Sometimes we let a Greek poet say something, or we become a Greek poet ourselves. The assignment is to soak up the light, read what everyone writes, and learn about octopus. The assignment is to light candles, have a little psipouru or something else, and learn some dances. To say kalimera to everyone in the morning and Καληνύχτα when we go back to our rooms at night. We hope to leave with many pages of something or another, and to see our work in new ways.˜

We'll most likely be meeting on the lovely terrace at my house (up the road from where you'll be staying). The plan is to meet on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday mornings there and to meet on Wednesdays at Beach Two for intensive writing mixed with private consultations.

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Notebook Poem - Livia M

Notes on Discovery, In Color


Tell yourself the crashing of stones feels like the color of waves and wine on the inside. Write in the grainy sand, with your toe, I do not fear it: I have been there and pretend the olive tree you sit under is an elm. Think of Sylvia Plath when you hear the waves and the laughter of inebriation; try to decide which one is more constant.
*          *          *
Strained and stinging is the essence of lemon and yet we find it so refreshing on calamari. I am always in awe at the person towards the other end of the table who could bite into one, and on a good day, swallow.
*          *          *
The skeletal Stray, white and with reptilian eyes is wounded. I can tell as he walks, shoulder blades and heart reaching upwards with each step. I think his soul is Egyptian. But I obviously can’t know for sure.
*          *          *
I placed my forearm up against the wall last night.
My skin seeming so tan on the white for a while
and then I remembered:
veins only appear blue from the outside.
Did you know my eyes change color?
Sometimes they are two sunlit grape vine leaves
                        otherwise they’re orchards, guarded by a ring of brown
                        allowing you still to taste the fruit of them.
*          *          *
I’ll throw out a rope
            give you a guide
            guide you with rope
                        and throw out the time. Don’t you see, I treat my poems like letters.
*          *          *
There was a time when I wasn’t sure if beauty could be found tomorrow. Now I know it can. I have no choice.
*          *          *
toŸmorŸrow |təˈmôrō; -ˈmärō|
noun

the day commencing at midnight today; (more simply) the day after today; (less simply) where a piece of my mind, no matter what I am doing, always lives. On good days that house is large and filled with light and the light makes colors like forest and peach and espresso.


LM 2015
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)