Finding the Muse with

Jacqueline Suskin & Laurie Wagner

Photo Credit Oiselle Ryan Warner

Live Online :: Thursday April 18th, 2024 (8-9:30am Pacific)

Friends,

“What would it be like to find inspiration everywhere you look. It’s a sacred challenge to mine the wonder out of everyday, out of trauma and pain, out of the mundane. This is what poetry does for us. No, it isn’t a magic wand that vanishes all atrocities. But it does make humanity reappear; it brings beauty out of the shadow, back to the surface, making it accessible. Poetry is a guide, a teacher, providing reminders on how incredible it is to be alive at all, even when it hurts.”

– Jacqueline Suskin

Please join 27 Powers in welcoming poet, Jacqueline Suskin, for a an exceptionally beautiful class on finding the muse, sourcing everyday beauty and writing poems that help us to heal and connect to our humanity.

Thursday April 18th, 8-9:30 am pacific time on Zoom

(Class will be recorded if you want to purchase and view later)

In 2009, Jacqueline Suskin opened up her Poem Store, which meant packing up her typewriter everyday, taking off on her bicycle and setting up shop at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market in Los Angeles to write poems for people. In the 10 years she made that her job, she wrote over 40,000 poems for ordinary citizens. This is how she learned about humanity, about people, how we all have the same longings, and the same heartbreaks. Writing this many poems meant that she had to find a way to open to the muse everyday, finding those bits of light and magic that are always lurking, that you can discover anywhere if your eyes and your heart are trained to find them.

In our time together Jacqueline will talk about:

  • How she learned to access her muse, and how we can learn to pivot quickly into beauty no matter where we are.
  • How connecting to awe – which is always around us – helps us to create meaning – in life and on the page – because connecting to awe is a life path.
  • We’ll talk about how starting small, with the the tiniest of moments is how we connect to the universal truths that our readers will feel, and which will make our stories or poems have more gravity and heart.
  • We’ll build a poem together and draft a path to beauty and depth on the page.
  • How writing 40,000 poems helped her to loosen the grip on the judgment she had about her work and whether it was good enough or not.

You do not need to be a poet to join us, just someone who wants to put more heart, more awe and more courage into their work, no matter what you’re writing. We love the poets because of their economy of language, and because poems fast track us to the heart.

PLEASE NOTE: For those who can’t make the live call or who want to review, the video replay will be sent within 24 hours of the live call.

Jacquline Suskin is the author of eight books: The Collected (Publication Studio, 2010), Go Ahead & Like It (Ten Speed Press, 2014), The Edge of The Continent Volume One (Rare Bird, 2018), The Edge of The Continent Volume Two (Rare Bird, 2019), Help in the Dark Season (Write Bloody, 2019), The Edge of The Continent Volume Three (Rare Bird, 2020), Every Day is a Poem (Sounds True, 2020), and A Year in Practice (Sounds True, December 2023).

With her project Poem Store, she has composed over forty thousand improvisational poems for patrons who chose a topic in exchange for a unique verse. Her work has been featured in New York Times, T Magazine, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, and various other publications. As the Artist in Residence at Folklife Farm from 2019-2021, Suskin founded a retreat program and continues to host artists from around the world. She lives in Detroit where she works with InsideOut Literary Arts bringing nature poetry into urban classrooms with her Poem Forest curriculum.

Find out more about her at: http://www.jacquelinesuskin.com/

Live Online :: Thursday April 18th, 2024 (8-9:30am Pacific)

Friends,

“What would it be like to find inspiration everywhere you look. It’s a sacred challenge to mine the wonder out of everyday, out of trauma and pain, out of the mundane. This is what poetry does for us. No, it isn’t a magic wand that vanishes all atrocities. But it does make humanity reappear; it brings beauty out of the shadow, back to the surface, making it accessible. Poetry is a guide, a teacher, providing reminders on how incredible it is to be alive at all, even when it hurts.”

– Jacqueline Suskin

Please join 27 Powers in welcoming poet, Jacqueline Suskin, for a an exceptionally beautiful class on finding the muse, sourcing everyday beauty and writing poems that help us to heal and connect to our humanity.

Thursday April 18th, 8-9:30 am pacific time on Zoom

(Class will be recorded if you want to purchase and view later)

In 2009, Jacqueline Suskin opened up her Poem Store, which meant packing up her typewriter everyday, taking off on her bicycle and setting up shop at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market in Los Angeles to write poems for people. In the 10 years she made that her job, she wrote over 40,000 poems for ordinary citizens. This is how she learned about humanity, about people, how we all have the same longings, and the same heartbreaks. Writing this many poems meant that she had to find a way to open to the muse everyday, finding those bits of light and magic that are always lurking, that you can discover anywhere if your eyes and your heart are trained to find them.

In our time together Jacqueline will talk about:

  • How she learned to access her muse, and how we can learn to pivot quickly into beauty no matter where we are.
  • How connecting to awe – which is always around us – helps us to create meaning – in life and on the page – because connecting to awe is a life path.
  • We’ll talk about how starting small, with the the tiniest of moments is how we connect to the universal truths that our readers will feel, and which will make our stories or poems have more gravity and heart.
  • We’ll build a poem together and draft a path to beauty and depth on the page.
  • How writing 40,000 poems helped her to loosen the grip on the judgment she had about her work and whether it was good enough or not.

You do not need to be a poet to join us, just someone who wants to put more heart, more awe and more courage into their work, no matter what you’re writing. We love the poets because of their economy of language, and because poems fast track us to the heart.

PLEASE NOTE: For those who can’t make the live call or who want to review, the video replay will be sent within 24 hours of the live call.

Jacquline Suskin is the author of eight books: The Collected (Publication Studio, 2010), Go Ahead & Like It (Ten Speed Press, 2014), The Edge of The Continent Volume One (Rare Bird, 2018), The Edge of The Continent Volume Two (Rare Bird, 2019), Help in the Dark Season (Write Bloody, 2019), The Edge of The Continent Volume Three (Rare Bird, 2020), Every Day is a Poem (Sounds True, 2020), and A Year in Practice (Sounds True, December 2023).

With her project Poem Store, she has composed over forty thousand improvisational poems for patrons who chose a topic in exchange for a unique verse. Her work has been featured in New York Times, T Magazine, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, and various other publications. As the Artist in Residence at Folklife Farm from 2019-2021, Suskin founded a retreat program and continues to host artists from around the world. She lives in Detroit where she works with InsideOut Literary Arts bringing nature poetry into urban classrooms with her Poem Forest curriculum.

Find out more about her at: http://www.jacquelinesuskin.com/

Live Online :: Jacqueline Suskin & Laurie Wagner

Thursday, April 18th, 2024: 8-9:30am Pacific

Wild Writing Family members, enter your discount code to save $10!
Not sure what your code is? Check your email invitation or the member site.

We want to open these A la Carte classes to as many people as possible. If you are suffering financial hardship, please contact us at alacarte@27powers.org for our discounted rate. We will do our best to accommodate a reduced rate for those in need. 

I’m excited to be partnering with Chapter 510, a nonprofit group in Oakland serving black, brown, and queer kids, ages 7- 18. Chapter 510 is a writing, bookmaking & publishing center that wants every young person in Oakland to write with confidence and joy. Chapter 510 believes that writing is an act of liberation, and that young people transform themselves and their communities when they write and get published, succeeding in work, school, and life. A portion of the proceeds from this event will go to supporting their free creative writing programs for black, brown, and queer youth.