classes

Maya Stein & Laurie Wagner

10 Lines That Can Change Your Life

People are always asking me, “what exactly ARE the 27 Powers?”

If you’ve been part of this community for any length of time, you know that I consider Maya Stein to be one of the major powers around here and someone whose writing has contributed mightily to my own work and to the work of others in this practice.

Having a writing practice that involves limitations and parameters, “10-line Tuesday” (a poem a week practice that Maya launched in June of 2005) has cultivated her awareness of spaciousness and deepened her commitment and passion for her creative work. Each week she sends these pieces out, and they’re like talismans, orienting the reader toward aliveness and beauty.

In this class, she’ll “walk us through” a handful of poems and share the practical steps she’s used to sustain this practice for more than 17 years. She will talk about the behind-the-scenes decision-making that goes into creating a weekly short-form poem and offer us a writing prompt to get everyone started on their own 10-line poem. And, as always, we will leave time for a Q&A.

We hope you’ll join us.

Maya Stein

Maya Stein

Maya wrote her first poem, “Papa Tree and the Seasons,” when she was 9 years old. It told the story of the life cycle of leaves, honing specifically on the fate of one little leaf who is the last one clinging to the branch before winter comes. She bound this poem into a little book, filled it with color pencil drawings, and proudly offered it up to her parents one evening. And she offers now that this quite accurately represents the instincts behind most of her work to date—the desire to capture that which is most fleeting, to locate the heart of its beauty and power, sustain its life through language, and share that language with others. She has always believed that much of writing is actually about seeing, about paying attention, listening in, getting up close and personal with the details, and she has built a poetry practice—and a life practice—around this.

Maya has been a freelance writer and editor for more than 20 years and has self-published five books and a handful of writing prompt booklets. Her latest books are “Grief Becomes You,” a collection of writings and photographs on the subject of loss from more than 60 contributors, and “The Poser: 38 Portraits Reimagined,” a full-color coffee table book of contemporary portrait re-enactments. She facilitates workshops and retreats—live and online—and also works one-on-one with people interested in deepening their creative practice and bringing new work to fruition.

Visit Maya online at – https://mayastein.com/

Live Online :: Maya Stein & Laurie Wagner

Purchase – $27 USD

This is the video replay of the live October 2022 class.

Potluck, by Maya Stein

The long table held the disparity of the guests: baked salmon under foil,
a polka-dotted bowl of sliced apples, spinach salad half-mooned with the season’s
last tomatoes. We went around the circle introducing ourselves. The rain had held off. 
Someone hauled firewood down the hill in a weathered wheelbarrow. 
The couple beside me had been married only a year. Nearby, two toddlers 
were collaborating on a construction project with the pea gravel underfoot,
kneeling in front of a pair of tiny yellow bulldozers. The world was dampened
by sorrow, and some of it had followed us here. But isn’t that always the story?
We had gathered anyway, as we must, making a loose line behind a stack of paper plates,
our bodies bearing an old, stubborn hunger that somehow never failed to surprise us.