Workshops

For full calendar, click here or scroll down

Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge, a poet/teacher with California Poets in the Schools as well as with adults, teachers and youth-at risk, brings tools and techniques to a workshop designed to make you feel excited about writing (and teaching) poetry. Susan has found that in a safe, free setting, surrounded with words, most everyone can write poems and they’re often extraordinary.

Susan starts us off playing with language. First, she helps us create “wordpools,” helping us see we’re all immersed in an ocean of words we largely ignore. We learn to create images, practice close observation, begin to develop metaphor, and gradually move into “dreamsense,” where we can explore who we are, where we come from and where we’re going.

Music, paintings and “word tickets” are all used to help us enter the realm where we begin to write poems that express more than words can say, an act Allen Ginsberg called “ordinary magic.”

Susan offers workshops ranging from two hours to two days for people of all ages--at conferences, in schools, businesses and homes. In longer workshops we may gather objects, write invocations and meet with our shadows.

Susan’s book poemcrazy: freeing your life with words was published in May 1996 by Clarkson Potter/Random House. The hardcover edition went into five printings, was selected by Quality Paperback Book Club and Writer’s Digest Book Club. The paper back edition came out in April 1997 and is now in a thirteenth printing. Poemcrazy is a Book Sense 76 Pick (Independent Bookstores) and though written for adults, is on the New York Public Library List of Outstanding Books for teens.

Bathing with ants, a chapbook of Susan’s poems was published in 2004 by Bear Star Press.

Susan recently completed a series of workshops in libraries throughout California sponsored by Poets and Writers and the Los Angeles Center for the Book. She’s been invited to do a similar tour to reach even more libraries this spring and summer.

SCHEDULE

Hello everyone. Thanks for checking in. Keep your eye on the schedule because more workshops will be added soon.

(free unless fee listed)
All ages welcome


Sat. March 13, 2010
10:30 am to 12:30 pm
Talk/workshop  FREE
(and open to the public)
Writer’s Forum
All Saints Episcopal Church
2150 Benton Dr.  (& Quartz Hill Rd.)
Redding, Ca.
Contact: Sharon Owen
sharonowen@citilink.net
530-547-5303


March 25, 2010 FREE
Thurs. 6:30 to 8:30 pm
Willows Library, Willows, Ca.
Contact Sandra Hobbs:
shobbs@cityofwillows.org
530-934-5156  x 132


April 3, 2010  FREE
Sat.  1 to 3 pm
Alameda County Library
200 Civic Plaza, Dublin, Ca. 94568
Contact Lee Jouthas:
Ljouthas@aclibrary.org
925-803-7266


April 17/18 (must register)
Sat. a.m & p.m sessions
Narrative nonfiction/ poem writing
Pleasanton Poetry, Prose & Art Festival
Contact David Wright:
Dawright@sbcglobal.net 
or John Kallio:
donnojuan@aol.com


April 24, 2010 FREE
Sat. session
Colusa Library
Contact Wendy Burke:
wburke@countyofcolusa.org
530-458-0372


May 1, 2010 FREE
Sat. 1 to 4 pm
Yuba County Library, Marysville
302 Second Street
Contact Kathleen Stewart:
Kstewart@co.yuba.ca.us
530-749-7340


May 4-5 2010 (please register)
Spokane& Colville Washington
Contact Suzanne McCurdy:
smccurdy@iel.spokane.edu
509-685-2120 x 6710
or Jim Mohr/Kathleen Thayer:
509-279-6045


More workshops to be scheduled soon,
Likely in New York City,
Santa Cruz Mountains, Ca.
And Ashland, Oregon
STAY IN TOUCH!



 
Susan has a unique ability to reach people in her writing and her workshops, helping them feel free to express themselves in new ways.

 

Exhilarating, playful and profound. Opens a tremendous creative frontier for people.
-Kathlyn Hendrix, author of Conscious Loving and The Conscious Heart.

 

I didn’t want to say goodbye to that day. -William, SED 5th grader, Chico.

 


Sitting and writing poems with Susan is like taking a lid off a jar.
-Laura. Chico.


 

What she drew out of us in a brief period was astounding.
-Patrick Gleason, Ca. Reading and Lit Project Workshop.
news & info
 
I've been doing a series of workshops in rural libraries sponsored by Poets and Writers Organization and the Center for the Book out of UCLA. Look and
see if any of the workshops are near you. They're about two hours each, free and we have a great time. You may discover a part of you that's long been in hiding.

Let me know if you'd like to have me come to your area to do a workshop. My fees are reasonable. If you can gather a group, I'll bring my word tickets and appear at your door. Contact poemcrzy@shocking.com

more

workshops
(free unless fee listed)
All ages welcome

March 25, 2010 FREE
Thurs. 6:30 to 8:30 pm
Willows Library, Willows, Ca.
Contact Sandra Hobbs:
shobbs@cityofwillows.org
530-934-5156  x 132

April 3, 2010  FREE
Sat.  1 to 3 pm
Alameda County Library
200 Civic Plaza, Dublin, Ca. 94568
Contact Lee Jouthas:
Ljouthas@aclibrary.org
925-803-7266

books


poemcrazy: freeing your life with words
Purchase Info.


Bathing with ants
A Poetry Chapbook
Purchase Info.

Foolsgold

Foolsgold: Making Something from Nothing (and freeing your creative process)
Purchase Info..
 

 

 

 
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