Poetry & Meditation Retreat / 2024

THE FERTILE VOID, THE WATERS OF THE PSYCHE 4-5-6 APRIL 2024 - Island of Aegina- Greece

For a poem to be born, the poet has to enter its empty space. There are the waters, their stillness and their movements. In this borderless, infinite and timeless space, words regain their catalytic and magical power, they return to their alchemical and ancient function of conjuring, transforming, embodying, visioning and creating.

The poet also needs to let herself be crossed by the poem; it is like receiving lightning with open arms, or lying down in a snowy field to let the cold take hold of us. In order to surrender, she needs to let go of all the strands of the known, she needs to make room and dare to cross the sea in complete blindness, guided by the senses, the trust in the poetic animal and the impulses of the heart. She needs to let go of the thought patterns that automate her, and consequently automate her language. The poet is like a plant that bears new fruit every season. Polyphonic and empty, she embodies the opposites in her act of creation. The poem. Verbal water to which we lend our lips. The poem as a river that flows without judgement, embracing everything in its path, being continuous.

In this retreat we will dive into the waters of the inner spaces applying various artistic / poetic techniques as well as the practice of meditation. We will learn to inhabit the inner emptiness that, like a desert, listens to the wind that blows in it, so that poems can be born from the freedom of the listener and gives form, without the intervention of judgement. We will dive into the presence of the body and learn to be guided in poetry by its signs, feeling them at the moment of writing and also before writing. The body, as the foundation of the poet, as a sounding board that collects the images and words that move the depths of the psyche. The waters of the psyche. We will learn to open our gaze to the invisible, letting the verses speak with their own waves.

We will work in nature, night and day, also in the studio. We will do meditation, writing, active imagination, nature practice and body/movement/performance practice. We will use objects, paint and colors, and different formats for writing. We will mix artistic techniques and meditation practices.