Personal Geology – A multi-genre workshop revealing mysteries from below the surface.
In the history of stone there is an era, a stratum, a fossil—subduction, fissure, fault. In the history of a life, too, there are these facts of accumulation, compression, and catastrophic change. In our workshop, we will delve into memory by the portal of imagination to bring home fragmentary specimens that litter the ground once we go looking. Writing in response to prompts, and sharing work in progress, we will assemble a museum of rich beginnings in poetry, prose, song, blessing, manifesto, and other forms.
Personal Geology
I had my sedimentary era—didn’t you?
Years of accumulation left recollections settling
in layers until the ground of my existence
stood deep with mystic hoardings.
Then came the igneous events of broken bond,
kin death, catastrophes of betrayal and grief
by which all bubbled open so melted certainties
could run like rivers from my depths.
Then metamorphosis crushed it all, tilted it,
wrinkled, buckled, made it dense and strange.
Deep in my strata faults shifted, crystals formed,
mountains rose by the subduction of the forgotten.
Now I am sandstone, schist, basalt. I am
weathered by trouble, eroded by age. Now
bring me rain to pare away the superficial.
Now reveal my museum of mysteries.
Kim Stafford is the founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute, and a co-founder of Fishtrap. He is the author of many books of poetry and prose, and a former Poet Laureate of Oregon.
Learn more: kimstaffordpoet.com