re-imagine and re-story your life and work

1.Zoom Wordshop
Driving through Rough Writing Country in your Metaphor by 4
On how we can create images in our writing and what happens when we do
Sun 25 July and Sun 15 Aug 15.00 – 17.45ish R320 pp (R600 both) (12 max)
I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one.

Sometimes it throws in a load of fish. (Bernard Malamud)

These zoom sessions consider how we can enliven and enrich our writing though imagery and imagination. Metaphors are everywhere, open to the eyes that seek them. Especially in nature. Stories are extended metaphors too.

Playing with metaphor is an opportunity to become curious again, free fall with words, and ignite creativity (LIzbe Vos, therapist)

This wordshop is for those who wish to: find their voice open to their creativity and imagination be entranced by the energy of words
learn, practice and enjoy the craft of writing Folks respond positively to these zoom wordshops. They connect, enjoy the company and experience and in no time are writing away. Happily.

http://dorianhaarhoffblog.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Aug-2021-whats-on.pdf

In Child Mode

There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top
problems in physics because they have modes of sensory perception that I
have lost long ago. (Robert Oppenheimer)

This month these two books arrived in my life via a charity (in Oz an opportunity or op) shop. Bringing a zany joy, a gust of air, an energy an
innovativeness. Lauren Child’s life story too is rich and strange. For her
books see https://www.thriftbooks.com/a/lauren-child/234795/0

This letter is not so much about writing for children, rather bringing this
child voice into our adult texts. Many writers testify to how tapping into
childhood memory revitalises our writing. “A writer who has had a childhood has enough to write about for the rest of their lives”.(Flannery O’Connor) “Children have more real voice. They talk poetically more easily…. Children have the gift of whole-heartedness, complete intentionality” (Peter Elbow.) “A child is “a natural existentialist” (Sam Keen)

Here’s one of my favourite cartoons. Apart from energy and detail, and the sense of “being there” as children, we were astonished by, absorbed in and sensually in our world. We lived in present tense. Entered a trance over a spider, a wheel chair woman, the wart on an uncle’s nose. Crying and laughing within one minute.

http://dorianhaarhoffblog.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Aug-2021-letter.pdf

Bouncing off Basho

The temple bell stops
but the sound keeps on coming
out of the flowers (Matsuo Basho)

One of the writing prompts – what I call ‘lit matches’ – that I enjoy involves responding to lines from another poet, entering the conversation implicit in the images. Such as a haiku (3 line poem with a 17 syllable count arranged 5 -7 -5) as in the one above. A talking into the silence. Like bouncing off a trampoline. Yet seeking simplicity. Minimalist. A brief moment, often juxtaposing two images, and creating a sudden insight similar to William Blake’s “to see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower.”

Wherever you are in the world… join a ‘virtual’ group or enjoy one-onone
mentoring…talk to me about choices. I create a space that is safe, supportive and encouraging

1. Running round the Writer’s Block: 2 Zoom sessions
   Sun 27 June and Sun 11 July SA Time 15.00-18.00 R320 each (R600 for both)
   “It’s easy to write. You just shouldn’t have standards that inhibit you from writing” (William
   Stafford) We relax we give ourselves permission to write out of our poverty. Tomorrow might bring riches. Join the sessions to find ways of jumping off the bridge into the river flow.
2. Sedegefield 30 July – 1 Aug 2021
   Zen Pen: A Writing, Being & Meditation Retreat
   Cost: between R780 – R680 pp. You decide (50% deposit secures)
   
   
   We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us to see their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our silence. (Yeats)
   
   
   Zen (Chinese chán ‘quietude’) invites us to be present, to live and write simply. Pen (Latin penna ‘feather’) refers to both practicing the art of writing and to the implement we use. It also invites us to play in a safe place – as in playpen.
   We explore the connection between writing and meditation. Both these states of grace slow us down so we can live in the moment. They increase our awareness and wake us up. We consider how creativity steadies the boat and how writing helps us dip the oars into dark water so we may navigate the river safely. Beginners are welcome. I encourage beginners’ mind.

http://dorianhaarhoffblog.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/July2021-whats-on.pdf

Wherever you are in the world… join a ‘virtual’ group or enjoy one-on-one mentoring…talk to me about choices I create a space that is safe, supportive and encouraging

1. Running round the Writer’s Block: 2 Zoom sessions
   Sun 13 June and Sun 11 July SA Time 15.00-18.00 R320 each ( R600 for both)
   “It’s easy to write. You just shouldn’t have standards that inhibit you from writing” (William Stafford) We relax we give ourselves permission to write out of our poverty. Tomorrow might bring riches. Join the sessions to find ways of jumping off the bridge into the river flow.
2. Namibia: Windhoek / Swakopmund/Walvis bay 3-21 June
   The Healing power of Stories: Children in need/at risk. Wordshops for trainers, counsellors, teachers, psychologists (sponsorship Carl Schlettwein Foundation)
3. Sedegefield area 30 July – 1 Aug 2021
   Zen Pen: A Writing, Being & Meditation Retreat
   We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us to see their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our silence. (Yeats)
   Zen (Chinese chán ‘quietude’) invites us to be present, to live and write simply. Pen (Latin penna ‘feather’) refers to both practicing the art of writing and to the implement we use. It also invites us to play in a safe place – as in playpen.
   We explore the connection between writing and meditation. Both these states of grace slow us down so we can live in the moment. They increase our awareness and wake us up. We consider how creativity steadies the boat and how writing helps us dip the oars into dark water so we may navigate the river safely.
   

http://dorianhaarhoffblog.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/June-2021-whats-on-2.pdf

Dear seeker of words and images

During the 13th and 14th centuries craft guilds oversaw the practice of their particular craft/trade. Some formed secret societies. Freemen, bound to a guild, were journeymen craftsmen while the apprentices or trainees were bound or indentured to a master craftsman for seven years. The apprentice at the end of the training presented a masterpiece to the Wardens. Guilds still exist today, representing local crafts and tradespeople in traditional skills, plus guilds for actors and writers. This is the ancestral line for mentors and coaches? Perhaps our modern internships and shadowing is a pale shadow?

In Goethe’s 1797 ballad, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a sorcerer leaves his workshop after setting his apprentice chores. Enter the ego. Tired of fetching water by pail, the apprentice enchants a broom to do the work for him, using magic in which he is not fully trained:

I ‘m now master,
I ‘m tactician,
All his ghosts must do my bidding.
Know his incantation,

http://dorianhaarhoffblog.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/June-2021-letter.pdf

The architecture of text
Dear seeker of words and images

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran (Coleridge)

Imagine entering a book as if a building, where the writer is the architect. Anne Michael’s depiction of an architect’s design in The Winter Vault, offers such a metaphor:

Sometimes… when I’m looking at a building, I feel I know the architect’s mind…. there are choices that strike me as so achingly personal, and there they are in stone and glass, for anyone to see . . . a man’s mind laid bare in the positioning of each doorway and window, in the geometric relationship between windows and walls, in the relation between the musculature of a building to its skeleton, the consideration of how a man might feel, placing his chair here or there in a room following the light…

Sometimes it seems as if the architect had full knowledge of these thousand other details in his design, not just the different kinds of light possible across a stone facade, or across the floor, or filling the crevices of an ornament, but as if he knew just how the curtains would blow into the room through the open window and cause just that particular shadow and turn a certain page of a certain book at just that moment of the story.
And what of architect poets? Michelangelo, sculptor, painter, engineer – less known as architect and poet. At 74 he took over as architect for St. Peter’s Basilica transforming the western end and dome.

http://dorianhaarhoffblog.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/May-2021-letter.pdf

Wherever you are in the world… join a ‘virtual’ group or enjoy one-onone
mentoring…talk to me about choices
I create a space that is safe, supportive and encouraging

1. Greyton
   Zen Pen: A Writing, Being & Meditation Retreat (space for 10)
   7-9 May 2021
   Fri 17.30 -19.30 Sat 11.30 – 18.30 Sun 09.30 -13.00 (Sat light lunch provided)
   Cost structure: between R780 – R680 pp .you decide
   Accommo: source your own @ reasonable prices

Zen (Chinese chán ‘quietude’) be present,
write simply
Pen (Latin penna ‘feather’) practice the art

in a safe ‘playpen’
In this retreat, surrounded by and part of nature, we explore our connection to writing and meditation. Both these states of grace slow us down so we can live in the moment.
Beginners are welcome. I encourage beginners’ mind. I create a space that
is safe, supportive and encouraging
Come and breathe life into words and let words breathe life into you
Venue: Ronel Wood’s home 9 High Str Greyton
Ronel ronel@ovation.co.za 083 455 6208

We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us to see their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our silence. (Yeats)

http://dorianhaarhoffblog.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/May-2021-whats-on.pdf

Dear seeker of words and images
Where shall I write?
You can read in the space of a coffin, you can write in the space of a toolshed.
(Annie Dillard)
Lorianne’s bamboo writing desk, seen in a recent
Emoyeni Zen Pen retreat.
(Part of this letter gleaned from The Writer’s
Voice.) In mid 1994 I visited friends in an English
village. Rebecca pointed out of her back window. ‘Do
you see that shack?” A small outbuilding. “That is
where Roald Dahl wrote.”
So I went to take a look. The single room left as he
had used it in his life time. An armchair and a green
board that Roald Dahl fitted over the chair. Pencil
rubbings still on the green board.

http://dorianhaarhoffblog.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/April-2021-letter.pdf

Wherever you are in the world… join a ‘virtual’ group or enjoy one-onone
mentoring…talk to me about choices
I create a space that is safe, supportive and encouraging
[

1. Temenos McGregor
   Zen Pen: A Writing, Being & Meditation Retreat
   16-19 April 2021
   Booking and payment through Temenos www.temenos.org.za 023 625 1871
   We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us to see
   their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with
   a fiercer life because of our silence. (Yeats)
   Zen (Chinese chán ‘quietude’) invites us to be present, to live and write
   simply.
   Pen (Latin penna ‘feather’) refers to both practicing the art of writing and to
   the implement we use. It also invites us to play in a safe place – as in playpen.
   Time to write, walk, circle the garden, sit amidst blue
   glass, breathe and be….
   What do writing, being and breath share in
   common? They all bring alive and expand the
   present moment. They invoke a conversation with
   ourselves and others. An exchange of energies.
   Writing is a skill drawn from attention, presence and
   openness – an organic process rather than a talent.
   On this retreat in a sacred space (Temenos) discover
   the writer inside you. We explore our innate creativity
   and imagination as we connect writing to
   mindfulness and bodyfulness

http://dorianhaarhoffblog.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/April-2021-whats-on.pdf