Bird’s Eye View: Understanding the Self and the World via Birding

A 4-week generative workshop with Laura Da’ and Ruth Joffre

At Half past Three, a single Bird
—Emily Dickinson

From the recurring patterns of creation stories to regional patterns of birdsong, birds navigate the currents of our narratives and intone the rhythms of our existence. Migration, adaptation, and perception are imperatives that we share with our fellow creatures, and writers have long looked to the avian world for glints of possibility and models of innovation.

In this class, we will embrace birding as an act of individual observation and an invitation to mutual curiosity and creativity. All genres and writing levels are warmly welcomed to read, speak, observe, and write together about birds.

This class is deeply rooted in the student’s experience of the world around them and encourages learners to consider and engage with nature in new ways through the focal point of a relationship with birds. Birding is, at heart, a practice of stillness and patience, of understanding how you and the presence of your body impacts other beings and entire ecosystems. Through birding, students will learn to better understand themselves and the world. Methods explored in the class include generative writing experiments and prompts, readings and discussions around text, observation strategies and birdwatching celebrations, and strategies for drawing from other mediums for inspiration.

When/Workshop Structure:
This workshop will begin Thursday June 6th and run for four weeks over Zoom as well as utilizing our rich interactive online platform, Mighty Networks.
Zoom meeting dates: 6/6, 6/13, 6/20, 6/27 — Thursdays from 5:30PM to 7:00PM Pacific. All meetings will be recorded and shared with registrants, in case you need to miss one or more.

Laura Da’ is a poet and teacher who studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is the author of Tributaries, American Book Award winner, and Instruments of the True Measure, Washington State Book Award winner. Da’ is the recipient of fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and The Native Arts and Culture Foundation. She is the current Poet Laureate for the City of Redmond and Poet Planner for King County, Washington. Da’ is Eastern Shawnee and she lives near Renton, Washington with her family.

Ruth Joffre is a Bolivian American writer and the author of the story collection Night Beast. Her work has been shortlisted for the Creative Capital Awards, longlisted for The Story Prize, and supported by residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Lighthouse Works, and The Arctic Circle. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in more than 50 publications, including Lightspeed, Nightmare, Fantasy, TriQuarterly, Reckoning, Wigleaf, and the anthologies We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2022 and 2022 Best of Utopian Speculative Fiction. A graduate of Cornell University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Ruth served as the 2020-2022 Prose Writer-in-Residence at Hugo House in Seattle. She was a Visiting Writer at University of Washington Bothell and George Mason University in 2023.

Pricing:

The following payment model is inspired by and borrowed from the payment model of Bayo Akomolafe’s class, We Will Dance With Mountains: Into the Cracks. 

This course offers two sliding scales based on your relative financial standing. The huge range listed below is meant to reflect the incredible disparity in economic conditions of people living in different parts of the world, and also the historical reality of stolen wealth in many different forms, generally from the so-called Global South to the North. In an effort to reflect disparity in economic condition and access to wealth, the following payment system is designed for those with more wealth to help cover the costs of those with less access to wealth and resources. We trust your discernment of how your current financial situation and how you fit into the global economic context.

As you decide what amount to pay, please consider your present-day financial situation governed by income, but also the following factors: historical discrimination faced by your peoples; your financial wealth (retirement/savings/investments); your access to income and financial wealth, both current and anticipated (how easily could you earn more income compared to other people in your community, country, and the world); people counting on your financial livelihood including dependents and community members; the socio-economic conditions of your locale (relative to other places in your country and in the world); your relationship to food & resource scarcity.

$350 Partner

$275 Supporter (Note: this reflects the “real” value of this course.)

$200 Companion

$150 Friend

Scholarships are also available for anyone needing further financial assistance. Please email Daniel at registration@corporealwriting.com for more info, or if you are feeling challenged in any way by the financial requirements of participation.