Two workshop series for developing your voice in storytelling

“The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.”
― George Lakoff, Metaphors We Live By  

Metaphor suggests one’s own ability to make a connection between two seemingly unlike objects and find their commonality. I think these last three words are key to something we often lose sight of in talking about imaginative language. The phrase "find their commonality" suggests that through commonality we create understanding. In fact, doesn't it seem that this purpose is the reason to read fiction, memoir, and whatever else we can find?

The English metaphor derives from the 16th-century Old French métaphore, which comes from the Latin metaphora, "carrying over", in turn from the Greek  (metaphorá), "transfer",^]from (metapherō), "to carry over", "to transfer" and that from (meta), "between" + "to bear", "to carry". 

We 'carry over' a way of responding in one sphere of our lives into another. 

Metaphor can happen in the verb, the noun, the adjective, and sometimes the adverb.

Consider how the metaphor creates deeper understanding in these examples of comparison between two concrete things in fiction and poetry: 

The driver was hunched forward, his arms encircling the wheel, his hands hanging down like paper hands. – Desperate Characters, Paula Fox

All around them were official buildings, with the peculiar character of large carnivorous mammals momentarily asleep. – Desperate Characters

Blackbirds sit in bunches. From a distance/ they are quiet as piles of dark grain/ spilled on the road. – Tom Hennen, Darkness Sticks to Everything

Getting off the bus near the ocean,/ the passengers are left behind as buoys.--Tom Hennen, Darkness Sticks to Everything

When the mind begins to snap/ you can’t tell it/ from the sound of wind/ rattling empty milkweed pods. --Tom Hennen, Darkness Sticks to Everything

You are with me when my courage /is as moveable as furniture. --Tom Hennen, Darkness Sticks to Everything  

A playful writing exercise: Write down three things you saw this morning.  Make these images into comparisons – include sensory detail if possible.

For example:

• an empty bird feeder hanging on a pole

• a dried out yet aromatic Christmas tree in the driveway buried under snow all winter until now

• three Heirloom tomatoes on a plate
  

Here is what I came up with in this exercise in the Monday night creative writing workshop:

• The empty bird feeder swings from its metal hook, an abandoned lighthouse.

• Three Heirloom tomatoes wait on a plate like sea anemone watching for little fish prey.

• A dried out Christmas tree is a woodsy Nautilus sliced open within which rabbits shelter.

How do the comparisons you make reflect who you are as an individual, with a sensibility, vocabulary and life experience original and unique from everyone else in the room?

If you want to learn more ways to play with language and use the tools of craft to develop your voice in stories you are writing, then join us in the Monday night creative writing workshop series or the Book Project workshop series!

The 7th Sierra Poetry Festival this Saturday, April 15th connects Nevada County artists with artists around the world

This Saturday, April 15th, 9 am - 6:30 pm, in the Center for the Arts in Grass Valley, CA, you have the opportunity to participate in open mic, readings, and workshops with other artists!

There are two poets in particular I'm looking forward to hearing at the festival. Lee Herrick will open with an un-keynote talk called (Be)longing: On Poetry, Loss, and the Joyful Reclamation of Proximity. Lee Herrick was recently selected as the tenth Poet Laureate of California; he is the first Asian American to serve in the role. He was born in Daejeon, South Korea, adopted at ten months of age, and grew up in Modesto. He served as Poet Laureate of the City of Fresno from 2015 to 2017. He co-founded Fresno’s LitHop, an all-day literary festival.

I love generative workshops, and one of my favorite poets is leading an afternoon one. Dorianne Laux’s most recent collection, a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, is Only As the Day Is Long: New and Selected Poems. Her other books include What We Carry, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Facts about the Moon, winner of the Oregon Book Award; and The Book of Men, winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize.She is founding faculty at Pacific University in Oregon, a professor of creative writing at North Carolina State University, and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

One of the past presentations that really blew off the top of my head was an interview with a Ukrainian clown artist and a Russian dance artist and their film collaboration. This year, the festival hosts a conversation discussing Agency, Sovereignty and Self-determinatioSierra Poetry Festivaln in Poetry, power dynamics between poetry and readership, and themes of possession, ownership and belonging. Mark Treddenick will speak with Aboriginal poet Judith Nangala Crispin live from Australia

I will have a table in the Poetry Place fair representing Tangled Roots Writing. If you go to the festival, please stop by to say hi! or call my cell to connect.