WRITING RHIZOMATICALLY is a six-week generative workshop I’ll be offering through Orion magazine.
Applications open Saturday, March 15!
Rhizomes are the runners that many plants and trees (like sassafras, elder, Solomon’s seal, ferns, and mayapples) send forth as they spread outward from a “mother” plant into a proliferation of shoots. In this class, we will use this growth pattern as a metaphor for our writing. How can we begin with one idea or image and let it grow naturally outward? How can we allow our thoughts to spread across the page in search of fertile ground adjacent to the “mother” thought, shooting up into more green growth? Let us send forth runners, explore, and see what takes root.
This course will be process-oriented and generative. Writers will have an ample amount of class time to generate material, share thoughts and ideas. We will read some published works with rhizomatic structures. Your instructor will invite plants, their rhizomes and roots, into the class for inspiration, and you will develop a draft of an essay throughout the course. Let us write in plant-like ways, in ways that machines can’t. Let us wander, probe the page as soil, and draw ourselves closer to our own rhizomatic intelligence.
Six classes will be held on Zoom, in two three-week blocks, with a break of one week in between.
The Duration: Classes will run over six Wednesdays from 4:30-7:30 pm EST from May 21-July 2. *Note: We will not meet on June 11, but rather use that week as break for your writing to grow outside of class.
Future students, I look forward to growing with you. 🌿