dree your weird.
poetry and motion.
If we accept as axiomatic that ‘the basis of mind is poetic’1 then ‘poetry’ becomes a critically relevant mode of access into the imaginal, the mundus imaginalis of Corbin, both as a practicing therapist and as an ordinary person who lives every day as a practitioner.
Poesis also means other relevant forms. Since the notion of body-as-image is as important as the noetic, and the expression of this especially through words,2 so the way to make soul, and to live with the revelation of the gods as ‘real, psychically’,3 would need to be both by the sword and by the word. The rubedo must be articulated, both as the movements of the body and as sound and text.4
Hence ‘poetry and motion’. This workshop will run two lines. Perhaps we might understand these as warp and weave, the two threads alongside one another, different, separate and yet together creating a context and container for the individual expression of as many varied tapestries as there are weavers. Hillman also says the word ‘subtle’ means a weave or canvas to give context to images.5 So this work will be subtle, refined, understated, subversive and shrewd.
One thread will examine poetry. We will explore some theory, such as how the ancients understand poetry and its connections with prophesy and mantics. But mostly, we will practice. How to encourage, to find and to allow images, being a ‘moving hand’ as poetic imagination arrives, and then housing the images in words, shaping, but not imprisoning, what asks to be expressed. We need to consider rhythms and patterns and structures, when to use them and how to break those open. There are some useful skills in learning to write, develop and especially in editing your verse, allowing enough distance for images to speak through you, and yet staying close enough for crafting and finding your style.
The other thread is dance and movement, of how images arrive in the body. Experimenting and exploring how we can deepen our intuition and trust, to allow the body to have its own articulation, with not too much interference from us, and yet with enough application to mature and refine the outwards expression of images as movement.
Both sections of this course have the same intention and follow a similar path. Primarily practical, with enough theoria to inform the subject, the point would be to attain experience, and to learn further in the crafting these applied practices.
Creativity 3 : Poetry and Motion
5 days. Knysna. Homework. Entry level A4+CR1.
1.UE1 Archetypal Psychology, ch2, ch12. Healing Fiction, p36. 2. Poesis is ‘making imagination into words’. Healing Fiction, p4. 3. UE1 Archetypal Psychology, ch 7, ch12. 4. UE5, Alchemical Psychology, pg 259. 5. Hillman, Image- Sense, in Benjamin Sells, Working with Images, p175.
UE: James Hillman, Uniform Edition. HF: James Hillman, Healing Fiction.