Poetry Writing for All

Learning Hour with Rev. Christina Hutchins

Sunday, February 28, 12:15 PM
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88967740143?pwd=M1pqRE92SnZBbjZKNmpvelBKVTNRdz09
ID: 889 6774 0143 Passcode: 261432

This experiential Learning Hour is for you if you have written poetry, secretly or publicly, for many years, if you haven’t written poetry since you were a teenager, if you can’t remember ever having written a poem, or have never thought about writing a poem until this moment! After a brief presentation on creating poetry with a process theology perspective, and a little group input, we will share a quiet period of time to write “together.” The poem-making will be enticed by means of a gentle and fun prompt, a chance to surprise yourself into a poem. There will be a little time for entirely optional sharing at the end, either in break out rooms or with the group. Have pen and paper at the ready. Writing by hand is recommended rather than the computer, because the physicality and imperfection (yes!) of making marks on a page often offers greater access to the imagination, but you can do it any way you please. It’s about freedom.

Rev. Christina Hutchins, PhD is a UCC minister, professor, and poet and has taught Process Theology, Preaching, UCC History & Theology, Beauty & Critique, and Poetry at Pacific School of Religion and elsewhere. She holds degrees in Biochemistry and Piano from UC Davis, an MDiv from Harvard, and a PhD from the Graduate Theological Union. Her poetry books include Tender the Maker, which won the May Swenson Award, and The Stranger Dissolves, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and Audre Lorde Award, and her poems appear in Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The New Republic, Salmagundi, The Southern Review, Women’s Review of Books, and elsewhere. She has won The Missouri Review Editors’ Prize, National Poetry Review’s Finch Prize, a fellowship to St. Petersburg, Russia, and served as Dartmouth Poet in Residence at Robert Frost’s home. She was the first Poet Laureate of Albany, CA.