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Archive for Poetry – Page 2

to be an artist…

Recently I had the pleasure of attending a workshop with the Center for Digital Storytelling. These guys are fabulous – very caring and knowledgeable individuals that in this case managed to draw out beautiful, personal, moving stories from each of the dozen attendees. Even more impressive, they shepherded us into making them finished videos in only 3 days.

It was a crazy adventure for me because I was trying to subvert the system and do something that could be useful for the intensive Digital Arts & Community course I'm teaching next month with FireHawk for Hartnell College, down in Salinas Valley. I didn't think the "personal story" form that Center for Digital Storytelling is geared towards was going to work for that purpose, but as it turned out doing anything less would not have been taking advantage of their wisdom and skill. It also probably wouldn't have been as good as what I ended up with, either. Have a look – it's only 2 1/2 minutes – but be sure to stay through the end, where there's a little surprise:

Winter Solstice

It's a little late, but I just found this poem by Rebecca Parker in my in-box (which shows how behind in my correspondence I am), and it was so lovely I wanted to share it.

WINTER SOLSTICE
by Rebecca Parker

Snow
Perhaps
for a
moment
the typewriters will
stop clicking,
the wheels stop
rolling
the computers desist
from computing,
and a hush will fall
over the city.

For an instant, in
the stillness,
the chiming of the
celestial spheres will be heard
as earth hangs
poised
in the crystalline
darkness, and then
gracefully
tilts.

Let there be a
season
when holiness is
heard, and
the splendor of
living is revealed.

Stunned to stillness
by beauty
we remember who we
are and why we are here.

There are
inexplicable mysteries.

We are not
alone.

In the universe there
moves a Wild One
whose gestures alter
earth's axis
toward
love.

In the immense
darkness
everything spins with
joy.

The cosmos enfolds
us.

We are caught in a
web of stars,
cradled in a swaying
embrace,
rocked by the holy
night,
babes of the
universe.

Let this be the
time
we wake to
life,
like spring wakes, in
the moment
of winter
solstice.

“If I ran the Internet”

In one of the superb series of TED videos sponsored by BMW, performance poet Rives shares this yummy juicy poem – “If I ran the Internet”:

TED is currently sponsoring a number of videos on the subject of happiness, and what makes us happy, no doubt inspired by the ground-breaking “Happiness and Its Causes” FREE conference coming up this week in San Fransisco (don’t miss it!). One of the TED Happiness videos is of journalist Carl HonorĂ©, talking about the slow movement, and slowness as a key to happiness.