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Poems of Witness: Living with Heart in a Conflicted World

Explore poems of witness and give shape to your unique poetic voice in this afternoon retreat of poem-making and community building.

Poetry allows one to speak with a power that is not granted by our culture. -- Linda McCarriston

This year of 2024 asks us to speak up and speak out, and by doing this, strengthen a community of conscience and caring. Yet it is a challenge in the midst of heartbreaking social and political realities to express and give shape to your unique poetic voice that is humane and beautiful; fierce, courageous and noble; creative and compassionate.

Your voice is necessary now and needed more than ever to bear witness to what you care about in this life. What is at risk for you? What do you care for? Rather than write the polemical, we will explore a voice that leans into the cathartic and generative, a voice both fierce and gentle. 

Our retreat will draw upon the poetry of William Stafford, Lucille Clifton, Adrienne Rich, Yousef Komunyakaa, and Naomi Shihab Nye. We will explore their poems of witness. Our intention is to encourage a poem-making that speaks the truth, treasures beauty, and empowers us to recognize our common good. 

Beginning and experienced poets and writers are welcome.  It will be valuable and safe for anyone with a desire to express their truth and creativity. 

John Fox, poetry therapist, is a poet and author of Finding What You Didn't Lose: Expressing Your Truth and Creativity through Poem-Making and Poetic Medicine: The Healing Art of Poem-Making. He is featured in the PBS documentary "Healing Words: Poetry and Medicine." John taught concurrently at The California Institute for Integral Studies in Expressive Therapy; Sofia University (formerly The Institute for Transpersonal Psychology) in Palo Alto, CA; and the Sophia Center for Culture and Spirituality at Holy Names University in Oakland, CA. He taught as adjunct at John F. Kennedy University – first through the Graduate School of Professional Psychology and then since 1997 in the Arts & Consciousness Department. In 2005 John founded The Institute for Poetic Medicine which provides poetry and poem-making programs to a wide range of people throughout the United States. IPM especially serves those who live at the margins and also has impacted practitioners in other countries: South Korea, Lithuania, Egypt and Hungary among them. He grew up in Shaker Heights and now lives in Mountain View, CA.