WORKSHOP FEES & DETAILS

Any of these courses can be run privately with a minimum of four students and a maximum of ten.
Contact Dianalee for time and availability - dianaleevelie@aol.com

The cost per session is $250.00 per student for 6 weeks. Each session runs approximately two hours. This fee includes the six sessions and personal critiquing of each poem written during the course.

THE JOHN HAY POETRY SOCIETY - NEWBURY LIBRARY, NEWBURY, NH

Come and enjoy, listen, or read. The 2nd Monday of the month at the Newbury Library, Newbury, NH.
All levels are welcome. During the winter months we meet on Zoom.

DANCING WITH DANTE
Come and dance a divine waltz. We will take a walk through hell with Dante before exploring Purgatory and then dancing into Paradise. Each journey will last six weeks. During that time we will begin to understand why The Divine Comedy has endured for centuries. I will also urge you to fall in love with original Italian poetry written in terza rima and other Italian fixed forms.

"Follow your own star!" - Dante Alighieri

POETRY AND THE BODY
In this workshop, participants will explore ways in which their bodies can enable them to think new thoughts and write in fresh and innovative new ways. Come and explore your subconscious through your physical perceptions. Learn how to tap into your body’s wisdom to see your work come alive. Through guided exercises and examples, this workshop aims to connect writers to new attitudes and deeper layers of their craft by enabling an artistic leap between consciousness and unconsciousness. We will write in the presence and primacy of sensual experience.

Facilitators:
Lisa Thibideau, Licensed Massage Therapist
Dianalee Velie, Poet

Lisa will be available during the weekend for pre-scheduled one hour massages.
Dianalee will be available for one on one pre-scheduled editing sessions.
(Please book the above sessions in advance).

“Creativity is the encounter of the intensively conscious human being with his or her physical world.” -Rollo May-

POETRY AS PRAYER
It has been said there are only two prayers, “please” and “thank you.” Like poetry, prayer often begins in torment or in gratitude. The intensity of poetic language cries out for truth and beauty. Through poetic writing exercises, we’ll explore ways we have experienced the Divine throughout our lives. The resulting work will be poems displaying our unique spiritual autobiography. We will be exploring our poems as paths to the Divine by asking questions such as, to whom does a poet address their work, an audience, a friend, or a Higher Power. No previous writing experience is required. The aim of this workshop is to support and affirm one another in telling our life stories, and to discern the commonalities among our differences. This commonality is where prayer resides. All paths and persuasions are welcome.

“Poets were my first priests, and poetry itself my first altar. It was a lot of other firsts too, of course: first classroom/chat room/confessional. But it was most crucially the first source of awe for me, because it eased a nagging isolation: it was a line thrown to my drear-minded self from seemingly glorious Others.”
- Mary Karr

SHORT FICTION
If you are ready to fall in love with the unique art form of the short story then this is the course for you. In this class we will explore the basic building blocks of short fiction and how they go together to make a story work. We will explore questions such as, where do ideas come from?  How do these ideas develop and shape themselves into a meaningful story? This course will provide students with a variety of strategies for generating ideas by exploring structure, conflict, primary and secondary characters, dialogue, point of view, and theme.  Students will read selected short works by various authors, then analyze the ways these authors use various techniques to move their story along and then apply these techniques to their own creative fiction.

 “Cut a good story anywhere and it will bleed.” -Anton Chekov

FIXED FORM POETRY: DISCIPLINE AS FREEDOM
This course will pay homage to the inherent power of fixed form poetry.  Using measured speech patterns, rhyme and narrative, students will write poems, in class and at home, that put a premium on technique and balance. Becoming aware of sound, rhythm and meter, we will explore the disciplines of formal poetry, disciplines that convey new freedoms for the poet writing formal verse.

Suggested Text: The Handbook of Poetic Forms. Edited by Ron Padgett. Teachers and Writers Collaborative, NY, NY

“Limitation makes for power: the strength of the genie comes of his being confined in a bottle.” - Richard Wilbur

POETRY: THE QUILL OF THE SOUL
Come get in touch with the passion and the power of poetry. In this workshop we will try to bring our minds down into our souls. By turning back to our core, exploring our interiors through poems, we will articulate truths we may not have realized before. Come fall in love with poetry by writing from your heart. Through a series of in class writing prompts, students will compose first drafts of poems to capture and encapsulate emotions, experiences and imagery. This encapsulation gives poetry its power.  There will also be take home writing assignments and opportunity to work on revisions each week. Poetry has an enormous benefit for everyone regardless of age or experience, so come and develop your mind and open your heart with poetry.

“Put your ear down to your soul and listen hard.” -Anne Sexton

POETRY: A WALK THROUGH THE GARDEN
Throughout history, gardens have been a great inspiration for poets and artists. A garden, whether formal or wild, engages all the senses and emotions. We sow, we weed, we harvest, we compost. We engage the powers of earth, water, air, and fire with spiritual simplicity. In a garden, we align with nature, relaxed, and resilient. A poet cannot walk into a garden without tripping over parables and inhaling quiet lessons. In this course we will read and write poems about gardens, both wild and formal. Come take a stroll into the spirit of poetic gardening.

“Every Natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

POETRY: THE PASSION AND THE PAIN
Poetry can be a great vehicle for working through the process of grief—the shock, the deep descent, the reluctant acceptance, and the slow crawl back towards life—

This workshop will provide validation for the range of feelings those who have experienced the terrible injustice of losing loved ones, through senseless violence, accidents or illness. In this workshop we will try to illuminate a single darkened path on the journey through grief.

I will be discussing my own personal journey and reading excerpts from my book, First Edition. First Edition takes the reader through my journey after the brutal murders of my daughter-in-law, Currie-Hill Velie, eight months pregnant with Jack Jasper Velie, and my two-year-old grandson, Joseph John Velie IV.

Grief is a journey we all experience at some point in our lives. With the power of poetry we will tune into our own wisdom and sometimes into the wisdom of those who have gone before.

Come get in touch with the passion and the power of poetry. In this course we will bring our minds down into our souls. By turning back to our core, exploring our interiors through poems, we will articulate truths we may not have realized before.

“Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves….” -Henry David Thoreau