Come write your wild river – October 11

Since Riverever was released on the Equinox, I’ve been taking it on a little polyriverous pilgrimage.

At each river, creek, lake, or other body of water I meet, I’ve been reading a poem aloud and sending a little love downstream.

So far: my own watershed of Jacoby Creek and Baduwa’t, and while traveling to visit friends and scout places in Oregon for next year’s wilderness rite-of-passage program, the Smith, Illinois, Rogue, Clearwater, and North Umpqua Rivers.

It’s been a playful little ritual, but also a reminder of something at the heart of both Riverever and Write Your Wild River:

Water is not backdrop.

It is kin, memory, mirror, movement, elder, teacher, collaborator.

And sometimes the best way into our own creativity is not to sit harder at the desk or studio, but to step outside and enter relationship.

Which is exactly where we’ll begin when this fall’s Write Your Wild River gathering starts October 11.

A small handful of us are already stepping in, and there’s room for a few more.

For six weeks, we’ll write from water, body, place, memory, wildness, image, play, grief, and surprise.

We’ll wander outside, read poems, experiment, listen differently, and make room for language that surprises us.

Less traditional writing workshop, more creative watershed.

Here’s one small taste:

Choose a body of water you know.

Let an image of it arrive. Or better yet, head down, say hi, put your hands in the flow, stick your feet in.

Then begin:

The water remembers…

Write for five minutes without stopping. Don’t explain. Don’t try to make it good. Follow whatever swims up.

Maybe the water remembers salmon.
Maybe your twelve-year-old knees.
Maybe a dam the river never agreed to, or one that no longer exists.
Maybe somebody or something you loved.
Maybe rain from before humans had names for rain.

That’s some of the territory we’ll enter together: letting place and body become collaborators and following language beyond the first obvious answers.

If something in you wants to write, wander, listen, play, and follow the current, this is the invitation.

WRITE YOUR WILD RIVER
Small-group creative immersion
Six Sundays, starting October 11 
10am–12pm Pacific
Online + small cohort + your choice of a book

[JOIN THE RIVER HERE]

(Also, if you come with a river companion you want to flow with, you’ll each receive $25 off.
– enter “buddies” in coupon field at checkout)

Bring your curiosity, your weirdness, your questions, your unfinished sentences, and whatever in you wants a little more room to flow

With rivers finding their way to the sea,
Ryan