Words for Wellness: Self-Nurturing with Transformative Poetry

Maker, Mentor, Muse & Alta Mesa Center for the Arts Presents

Words for Wellness: Self-Nurturing with Transformative Poetry
led by Audrey T. Williams
Two sessions: Saturday, June 20th - 4pm-6pm PDT & Sunday, June 28th - 4pm-6pm PDT
Zoom

In this 2-week series, discover the transformative power of “Poetry as Medicine" on your journey of self-care. This course provides a creative, reflective, community-held space to recharge and reconnect to the depth of feeling in your interior world. Each week, the session will begin with a close reading of 2 poems curated for that week’s theme. After thought-provoking group discussion of each poem, we will have a short generative writing time based on prompts from the readings with the option to share what you wrote.

You will gain the experience of unpacking the symbolic meaning and associative feelings that poems convey, as well as learning how experiencing poetry in community from multiple perspectives can help process emotions, reduce stress, and help build your toolkit for radical resilience while fostering connection with others. This course is not about trying to decipher what the poet was writing about, it's about how each poem makes you feel and why.

Don’t miss this opportunity to join a supportive community of peers and discover the healing power of poetry to inspire you! Spaces are limited to 15 attendees — register now to reserve your spot! 

You can attend one session or both! The price for each session is on a sliding scale: $35-$75. 

About Audrey T. Williams

Audrey T. Williams is a poet, storyteller, and literary healing artist. She is a Southern Black American woman with Indo-Burmese heritage and the Founder of Ancestral Futures: Literary Arts for Liberation.

Audrey is a PhD student in Depth Psychology (Community, Liberation, Indigenous, and Eco-Psychologies) at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her work centers creative writing as an expressive arts healing framework that braids eco-feminist ancestral medicine, somatics, and transformative literary arts into a single embodied liberation practice.

Her poetry and prose have appeared in magazines such as Lightspeed, FIYAH, Space & Time, and beyond. She is a freelance correspondent for the Bay Area News Group and holds an MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts. Audrey has three books currently under contract.

She believes in the power of poetry as medicine, and that the healing path to individual and collective liberation is one we are meant to walk together in community. Learn more at audreyTwilliams.com.

Maker, Mentor, Muse is a teaching platform founded in 2022 by Mary Volmer, Maw Shein Win, and Dawn Angelicca Barcelona. Hailing from three distinct backgrounds, generations, and spiritual traditions we believe community is essential to building a satisfying and sustainable literary life and that true success requires balancing all three artistic roles: maker, mentor, muse. In collaboration with Alta Mesa Center for the Arts, sponsored by Orinda Community Church, we are building a place where artists embrace practices that honor process, spiritual growth, connection, and ongoing community with other writers.