Tag: poetry

2025 Women’s Creative Writing Workshop Retreat: Inspirations for a New Year

January 2-8, 2025, seven days, six nights in Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico. It’s the start of 2025, a new year, and we are inspired to revisit the years passed and the one that now begins. What are our hopes, dreams, wishes, aspirations. What are our regrets. What memories come up that bring us gratitude, […]

Day of the Dead 2019 Women’s Writing Retreat: How Memory Inspires Us

Arrive Wednesday, October 30 and leave Monday, November 4, 2019. The retreat can accommodate up to 10 women. We gather for Day of the Dead 2019 in the traditional Zapotec village of Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico to write with intention for five nights and four days. Day of the Dead inspires us to revisit our […]

Flores y Cantos Mixed Media Art Exhibition at Museo Rufino Tamayo

The opening was last night. The food was amazing. The exhibition ethereal and dramatic. The premise: in the language of the Aztecs, Nahuatl, when the two glyphs flower and song are joined, the new meaning is art and poetry.  This concept was essential to the Aztec worldview, according to exhibition creator Carolyn Kallenborn, professor at University […]

Bug Poetry to Whet Your Appetite: Oaxaca Inspiration

I asked my writing sisters who attended the 2017 Women’s Creative Writing and Yoga Retreat to write about their experience tasting Oaxaca edible bugs after I wrote the essay for Mexico News Daily. I just heard from Lee Schwartz, who offered up this poem as a taste bud tickler. Birds, Bees and Witchery Grub by Lee […]

Exquisite Corpse Poem 2015, Oaxaca Women’s Creative Writing and Yoga Retreat

The Exquisite Corpse Poem is a collaboration.  Each writer in the group contributes a random sentence or phrase that then becomes part of a complete poem. The result is surprising and creative!  We do this each year as part of our closing ceremonies for the Oaxaca Women’s Creative Writing and Yoga Retreat. For 2015, our […]

Women’s Words, Creative Writing and Yoga Retreat Closes for Another Year

Our fifth annual Oaxaca Women’s Creative Writing Retreat just ended.  After an intensive week of writing, listening to each other’s words and offering feedback, our participants dispersed to upstate New York, Denver, Manhattan, North Carolina, the north coast of British Columbia. We are a diverse group.  Our words resonate, are distinctive and universal. I have […]

News: Two Spaces Open for Women’s March Writing Retreat

We have been SOLD OUT for months, but today I received two cancellations for the 2015 Oaxaca Women’s Creative Writing and Yoga Retreat that starts March 6, 2015.  That means we have TWO SPACES OPEN now. If you have been thinking about expressing your creative self and escaping winter, this could be the workshop you […]

Women’s Creative Writing and Yoga Retreat 2015: Lifting Your Creative Voice

Announcing the 5th Annual Women’s Creative Writing and Yoga Retreat.  Arrive Friday, March 6, depart Saturday, March 14, 2015–8 nights, 9 days with market tour,  plus options for traditional Oaxaca cooking class, and temescal* sweat lodge. SOLD OUT!  JOIN THE JULY 28-AUGUST 6, 2015 SESSION. You are a woman with something to say. You keep […]

New Book of Poetry Crafted During Oaxaca Women’s Creative Writing and Yoga Retreat

Poet Katie Kingston has news! Lost Horse Press has just published her new book of poems, Shaking the Kaleidoscope.  It is her first complete book! Katie wrote this morning to tell me, “Two poems from the Oaxaca conference are in the book, so I was pleased to acknowledge the Oaxaca Women’s [Creative] Writing Retreat. The chapbook [instructor] […]

Tribute to International Women’s Day Through Poetry

Who knew there would be a full moon illuminating the courtyard at Las Granadas  Bed and Breakfast last night, March 8, when Professor Robin Greene and I planned our Women’s Creative Writing and Yoga Retreat a year ago?  And, who knew that it would coincide with International Women’s Day?  Who knew that nine magnifient women […]

Photo Diaries: Blending Photography and Prose

What is photojournalism?  Our workshop instructor June Finfer, Chicago documentary filmmaker/photographer/playwright explains it this way:  It is making a picture, capturing the connection, creating something out of what you are feeling as you go beyond the surface of what you see. Our charge this week is to make photographs and then write about impressions that […]

Novelist, Poet and English Professor Robin Greene Leads Creative Writing Workshop

Robin Greene, novelist, poet, English professor, yoga practitioner, parent and wife, is a native New Yorker who is a “Southerner by choice.”  She came to Fayetteville, North Carolina in 1989, and joined the faculty at Methodist University where she is now Professor of English and Writing, the Director of the Writing Center, and Literary Editor […]

Writer’s Guide to Reading in Public: 8 Tips

Writers are solitary, work in silence, and are often intimidated by the daunting prospect of reading their work in public.  Robin Greene, MFA, the leader of our Women’s Creative Writing and Yoga Retreat attributes this fear to our collective wish to “get it right and not make mistakes.”  She says that imperfection is what makes […]

Vocal Yoga: Medicine Melodies, Ah Ohm Hoong Rahm Zah

A moment remembered from the Women’s Creative Writing and Yoga Retreat: Our yoga guide Beth Miller gathers us around her in a circle.  We sit on chairs, backs tall.  At the head of the room is the traditional Zapotec altar complete with candlesticks and an incense burner ready for the next celebration.  Forefinger touches thumb […]

Food and Poetry: Writing About Eating, Ingredients and the Kitchen

After our cooking class with Reyna Mendoza Ruiz, Robin Greene, MFA, led us in a writing about food discussion.  She referred us to Poet Laureate Mark Strand’s poem, “Pot Roast.”  He uses words masterfully:  gaze, sit, spoon, “I bend, I raise my fork in praise.”  We come to a place where we are ‘eating poetry.’ […]

Creative Writing Workshop in Oaxaca: Soft and Hard Sounds of Language

“Writers pay attention to the emotional quality of the sounds,” says our workshop leader Robin Greene, MFA. Think of the word “mother,” she continues and the comforting “mmmmm” sound.  The quality of the sounds are the tools to create an emotion.  The hard sounds of “t” and “k” convey the harshness of an emotion as […]

Benediction to Silence: Writer’s Meditation

As I mentioned in my last post, during our writing and yoga retreat, we observed periods of silence in order to explore the feelings this would evoke that could be translated to our writing.  This was my experience. Benediction to Silence The silence is stunning, solitary, others do not know,  I must tell them by […]

Oaxaca is perfect for creative renewal.

Many of you are already engaged in learning, doing, and expanding your creative lives through writing, yoga, painting, photography and more.  Some of you are exploring your creativity independently and others are taking courses or workshops locally or attending regional or national conferences or pursuing your creative lives professionally. Why would someone consider coming to […]

Creative Writing: Wherever you go is where you are.

Creative writing is creative ignorance, according to Robin Greene, MFA.  Robin is the author of several books:  poetry, non-fiction and memoir, and fiction.  As she gathered us around the table for the women’s creative writing and yoga retreat, she talked about what it means to write for her.  Then, she opened it up for our […]

Oaxaca Women’s Writing Retreat: Lifting Your Creative Voice

Click on this link for March 2012 program http://wp.me/p1v1Ek-1hB You are invited to join Professor Robin Greene, MFA, for six days of writing, renewal, and self reflection. In a supportive small group atmosphere, you’ll be encouraged to find your own creative center and to surprise yourself with the power of your words. You’ll have the […]

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