Gratitude in review and new projects for W2C

Wow, it has been a terribly long time since I have updated W2c's blog! Well, as I might say during a W2C workshop--don't let long silences or periods of being stuck stop you from letting your mind and body stretch out on to the page.

So, here we are. I hope all those who have been part of W2C workshops are feeling thankful for something in this season--and whether you are writing or not, I hope you are finding poetry in your mind and your movements through the world.

I've been busy going through some life changes, beginnings and endings, and thus, being slow and soft with myself in writing. Taking the time to find new habits and to explore how those habits let me in to new ways of being on the page.

I am grateful for the chance to have read and dialogued about my poetry with disability community collaborator Denise Leto at the Library for the Blind and Print Disabled during San Francisco's Litquake festival this year. I am also very grateful to my publisher  Patrick Durgin, who gave us the idea of querying Access Living about a visit. I hope that Denise and I can be part of their Disability Arts and Culture programming and do a W2C event in Chicago.  

In my work-a-day life, I am super thankful to all the residents at Laguna Honda Hospital who have been coming to the disability empowerment workshops that I run with my coworker, Alicia Contreras. We run these as part of our jobs at the Independent Living Resource Center, but the candor and emotion that the LHH residents have shared--many of them recovering from stroke or traumatic brain injury--have given me new ideas for W2C.

And, I am really thankful to Todd Shalom of Elastic City, who is prompting me to create an art walk in the vein of W2C and to re-imagine W2C as participatory body/poetic experiences instead of classes.  To find out more about Elastic City and what you might be able to expect/join me for when I get my walk underway, go to: http://www.elastic-city.org/

Stay connected for details about regular W2C series' at the SF main library and/or the Western Addition branch. Also, you can always contact me about palmetry sessions--palmetry is like a one-on-one W2C workshop combined with energy work. Oh, I forgot to say!--I am so grateful to be part of a compassionate healing touch class at Shambala in Berkelely. It is lead by two Buddhist teachers/cranio-sacral therapists and the folks taking the class are nurses, war survivors, people with disabilities and chronic illness. It is an incredibly revitalizing experience and we are only halfway through. 

Bye for now, W2C friends. I have decided to let the blog live as archive of W2C events/workshops that happen and use the Facebook page on a more regular basis. FB allows for more back and forth, more interaction, and on-the-fly thoughts, so please join me there and let me hear your voice. Please don't think nothing new is happening at W2C if you don't see updates here. Keep checking your inboxes and the FB page for upcoming ways to be part of W2C!





Be in touch

amberdipietra@gmail.com
415-867-1124
@thebodypoetik
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