CEUs: 3

Instructor: Rodger Kamenetz

*Workshop not eligible for volunteer benefits.

Both dreams and poems arise in primary imagination but the question remains, how can dreams be used in poems? Rodger’s approach avoids the pitfall of writing dreams as poems, which rarely works. Instead he will show how you can write new poems from the dream-state, from an experience of the primary imagination.

In this workshop, we will look at how dreams encourage us to focus on images and feelings in poetry. Please bring some current dreams and we will learn how to generate new poems from your dreams and from the examples of poetic masters including Elizabeth Bishop, Jean Valentine and Alice Notley.

About the Instructor
Rodger Kamenetz is a poet and author of eleven books. His best known are The Jew in the Lotus, an international bestseller about Jewish-Buddhist dialogue and The History of Last Night’s Dream, which was featured on Oprah Winfrey’s “Soul Series.”  A Professor Emeritus of English and Religious Studies at LSU, he founded the MFA program in creative writing. His poetry has appeared in five books, most recently, The Lowercase Jew (Northwestern) and To Die Next To You (Six Gallery), in dozens of anthologies and in The New Republic, The Southern Review, Grand Street, Shenandoah, Crazyhorse, and many more. Since 2003 he has dedicated himself to working with clients who find spiritual direction in their dreams. More at www.kamenetz.com and www.thenaturaldream.com.