Sit like a mountain, write like a river.
Mountains and Rivers
is a writing & meditation group for writers, secret poets, & those who are open & curious about how these practices can support one another
Wednesdays, November 6-20, 2024
Noon to 1:30 PM Eastern Time
Together, with meditation teacher/poet/artist Susa Talan (Open Door Meditation Community), and poet/artist/writing teacher Holly Wren Spaulding (Poetry Forge), we will explore the the themes of Wakefulness, Wisdom, Community, through practices that we've found to be most useful and transformative in our own lives.
What to expect:
Each of our gatherings will open with a brief reading to center us, followed by meditation (~20-30 minutes) guided by Susa. After that, we will embark on a period of writing (~30 minutes) with Holly. Those who are interested in working toward a poem will be given materials to help shape that process; those preferring to use the time for reflective writing will be offered an alternate prompt to explore on the page. Friendly conversation on the week’s theme, reflections on the practices, and reading from our notebooks (always optional) will follow.
We look forward to sincere exchanges about the correspondences you find between art making, the cultivation of your bodymind, and what some might call numinousness, and we are excited to share this special offering with you, fellow contemplatives, because our creative lives are simultaneous with our spiritual lives, and each has enhanced the other in truly profound and transformative ways.
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The Mountains and Rivers group meets on Zoom and is hosted by Poetry Forge. Study materials and recordings will be housed inside the Poetry Forge class portal for easy access to members, for a whole year.
The Fall 2024 series is the outcome of years of conversations and individual inquiry. Having discovered and distilled what we find most essential in terms of our creative lives, we want to share the key lessons with you, along with a project that could become a focus during the months that follow.
www.poetryforge.us
“Clearing the mind and sliding in / to that created space, / a web of waters streaming over rocks, / seeing this land from a boat or a lake,/ or a broad slow river, / coasting by.”
—Gary Snyder, “Endless Streams and Mountains”
Enroll Now
About Us
Susa Talan is a meditation teacher who cofounded Open Door Meditation Community in Portland, Maine. She has been studying and practicing Insight Meditation since 2006, and is a long-time student of Sayadaw U Tejaniya with whom she ordained temporarily in 2010. Susa has been writing poetry and making art for more than three decades. She brings a lifetime of experience living with ADHD to her work supporting other meditators. Susa has an abiding interest in the ways we can work with the mind and heart to alleviate suffering, and bring joy and ease to our human experience.
Raised in a family where Zen poetry and philosophy were primary influences, Holly Wren Spaulding devoted herself to poetry and art from a young age. She earned an M. Phil. in Creative Writing from Trinity College Dublin around the time she took formal precepts as a Buddhist. She is a student of Haju Sunim and longtime member of the Zen Buddhist Temple in Ann Arbor, Michigan, although she now lives and practices in Maine. The natural affinity between her spiritual inclinations and the practice of poetry is at the heart of all she does. As a teacher and mentor to writers, she is especially interested in the ways we can cultivate and sustain our connection to the present moment through a poetics of attention.
