Webinars
“I truly love your manner with the students. I particularly admire the way you help them find ways to not settle for the easy response, but to look inside to connect to something meaningful.”
NOTE: Each session’s replay video will be emailed post-session, so you won’t miss anything if you can’t attend “live.” The replay videos are generally viewable for one year, during which time the webinar (its recordings and materials) is still available for purchase.
- DARK TO LIGHT: Renewing a Poem Through Contrast
When: Thursday, December 21
12:00–2:00 PM Eastern / 9:00–11:00 AM Pacific
Cost: $39
For the Winter Solstice—the longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, when the Earth’s axis is maximally tilted away from the sun—we will examine the tilts and turns, the shadows and shifts, in well-made model poems, and identify successful strategies we can apply when generating new work and revising old work toward greater complexity, tension, and balance.
Plus, an optional supplementary session:
- DARK TO LIGHT Open-Discussion Group
When: Thursday, January 4, 2024
12:00–2:00 PM Eastern / 9:00–11:00 AM Pacific
Cost: $29
This supplementary session is open to anyone who attends (or watches the replay video of) the 12/21 DARK TO LIGHT instructional webinar. Attendees will cold-read the submitted poems (one 1-page poem per attendee, generated from the webinar’s exercises; submission not required), though I will advance-read to heavily facilitate our group discussion, which will focus on how the poem at-hand tilts and turns (or not) and how it might be strengthened, extended, decluttered, etc., toward a more dynamic version of itself.
- SEE & SAY: Visual Art as Spaces for Literary Expression
When: 8 Mondays: January 8, 15, 22, 29, February 5, 12, 19, 26
12:00–1:00 PM Eastern / 9:00–10:00 AM Pacific
Cost: $99
John Berger said, “Seeing comes before words.” How may we see (experience) a painting, drawing, collage, such that we can locate our unrealized poems and build them beyond mere description of the visual art? After grounding the series in the varying degrees of response, we will view, per session, one artwork by a contemporary or traditional painter, then draft our own poetry or prose with some optional guided prompts. You will leave each session with a solid draft of poetry or prose.
This weekly hour is for you if YOU:
- Learn and write better in community and with a structure.
- Want to build or strengthen or jumpstart your writing practice.
- Don’t have a ton of time.
- Need a midweek jolt of creative inspiration.
- Love to access your imagination and memory via the visual arts.
- POEMADE: How to Make a Poem from Scratch
When: 8 Wednesdays: January 10, 17, 24, 31, February 7, 14, 21, 28
12:00–2:00 PM Eastern / 9:00–11:00 AM Pacific
Cost: $249
Consider this: A poem is a body of words, not a body of thoughts and feelings. Yes, our thoughts and feelings and experiences may catalyze our poems, but how we choreograph our words, how we make meaning (not what our words say or mean), is what moves a poem from self-expression to literary art. How do we make such poems, textual/subtextual bodies that enact and transform experience (rather than report or describe it) so that discovery or rediscovery is possible for both writer and reader?
We build them from the inside-out, which requires relating to language primarily as material, as our artistic medium (and secondarily as meaning). In this 8-session webinar, we will examine some key ingredients that make a poem poetry, devoting one session each to word choice, sound, form, relationships among parts, idea movement, shifts, point-of-view, and global integrity—all of which comprise multiple considerations. This webinar is beefy!
POEMADE is for you if you’re seeking:
- a breakthrough in, or jumpstart to, your poem-making
- practical, immediately applicable craft strategies for drafting and revising
- a structure for learning and practicing in digestible pieces
- fresh distinctions for interrogating and illuminating your poems at the revision stage
- rigorous feedback from self (that an outside critique group may not provide)
Each session will close with an exercise to practice the session’s ingredient over the following week. You will be able to email me, before the next session, one poem demonstrating your attention to that ingredient (this invitation is to provide an accountability structure for the assignment, not my critique/feedback on your poem).
Self-Paced Learning
- HYBRID-ARTS SELF-PACED LEARNING
If you missed any iterations of the hybrid-arts series that ran from January through June 2021 (“Cross My Heart and Hope to Fly: What Can Writers Learn from the Other Arts?” and “RE: RE: RE: Practice, Process, Product”), you can grab these video learnings now, by the month or the bundle, and explore, at your own pacing, these focused, meaty inquiries that will serve your writing, from conception to execution.
Each one-hour session provides:
- One or more brief samples of nonliterary artforms.
- A group discussion about what those samples can teach us about artistic conceptualization, craft, and presentation.
- Sample writings demonstrating those concepts.
- One or more writing challenges applying those concepts.
CHOOSE your learning by the MONTH or BUNDLE:
COST:
By the month: $22/month ($5.50 per one hour of inquiry & instruction)
By the bundle: If you prefer to pick-and-choose from among the month-by-month sessions outlined below, simply choose one or more bundle options:
- any 1 session: $10
- any 2 sessions: $18 ($9/session)
- any 3 sessions: $24 ($8/session)
- any 4 sessions: $30 ($7.50/session)
JANUARY
- Photography: Form Serving Content / Rule of Thirds
- Music: Embodiment / Charging Meaning
- Comedy: Word Choice & Scene-Setting
- Painting: Making the Familiar Unfamiliar
FEBRUARY
- Film: Imagery & Metaphor / Pacing
- Cartoon-Drawing: Composition & Sequencing
- Photography: Point of View & Psychological Distance
- Songwriting: Scaffolding /Associating
APRIL
- Photography: Frame Within a Frame
- Poetry/Music/Comedy: Listening
- Cartoon-Drawing/Painting/Comedy/Poetry: Knowing What to Put In & What to Leave Out
- Film: Inessential vs. Essential Mystery
MAY
- Photography: Symmetry & Asymmetry / Balance & Tension
- Sculpture: Material & Shape
- Music / Film Score: Tension Through Music
- Cartoon-Drawing/Comedy/Painting: Subversion
(via Comfort/Familiarity/Clichés)
JUNE
- Photography/Painting/Film: Micro/Macro & Abstraction (Close & Faraway)
- Photography: Negative Space
- Painting/Music/Dance: Medium/Components vs. Subject/Experience/“(Un)Reality”
- Photography/Painting/Music: Affirmation vs. Astonishment (Note: This session will be more meaningful if considered in relation to the #3 content.)
TO PURCHASE by the month or the bundle:
- Go to: paypal.me/MarjHahne
- Click “Send”.
- Insert the total cost of your month(s) ($22 per month) OR your bundle(s).
- In the “Add a note” section, indicate which month(s) you want (e.g., January, June) OR which sessions you want by month and number (e.g., February #2, May #4, June #3).
- Once I receive PayPal’s e-notification, I will email you each session’s replay video and materials.