Stepping Westward—Poetry as Cairns

Stepping Westward—Poetry as Cairns
Performance & Poetry Workshop
with Martin Steingesser & Judy Tierney
Living Water Spiritual Center
93 Halifax Street, Winslow, Maine
November  14, from 9:30  am  to 3:30  pm
Fee for performance and workshop is $45, including lunch.
Pre-registration,  with fee, requested.

The program is in two parts, the first a presentation of poems, viewing and treating them as cairns that mark a way along the road we call aging. Just as the traveler marks a trail by placing stones along the way, poems may serve as guides, or be used to pay tribute or celebrate another’s passing. The program explores ways some poems guide, some reassure that—if alone—others have traveled similar paths, understood something of the terrain and moved on.
“The program itself is meant to be a journey we might be nourished to take together,” Tierney says, “stopping to lift and touch some of the poems for what reassurance, light and joy we find in them.”
In the second part, participants will be encouraged and helped in identifying moments to write about that might serve as markers, or memorials, on their own life’s path.
“We will be looking for how wind soughing among spruce and hemlock, lap of waves, the migrating geese, conversation and weather ruffle the heart’s fur, reflect and carry our stories,” Steingesser says.
Steingesser is the author of a book of poems, "Brothers of Morning", and also a performer. Portland’s first Poet Laureate (2007-09), he was selected to receive the Maine Alliance for Art Education’s Bill Bonyun Award in 2006 “for exemplified talent and professionalism as an artist and for being an inspiration to students, teachers and the community.”
Judy Tierney has been presenting poems in Maine for several years and has been nourished in the garden of poetry over many life seasons. She was creator and host of a weekly radio program, “Walking in the Air,” celebrating poetry and its voices, on WRFR, Rockland’s community radio station.
Steingesser and Tierney also perform together with a cellist in an award-winning program, “The Thinking Heart,” an original ensemble work based on the writings of a Dutch woman who died in the Holocaust, which has been the recipient of several Arts and Humanities grants from the Maine Humanities Council and Maine Arts Commission.


For additional information go to title link; http://retreatinmaine.com/calendar.htm
Or Contact • Living Water Spiritual Center, 207-872-2370, or info@retreatmaine.com
Martin Steingesser & Tierney, Presenters, 207-828-9937, or windspooning@yahoo.com