Workshop Format
Seven 1.5 hr sessions on pacific time, will be delivered as an online experience with multiple modes of engagement that is adopted from the latest online education technologies combining neuroscience, cognitive science and machine learning.
Here is the Lesson Plan for the Rumi Writer’s Workshop.
The Rumi Writer’s Workshops is a generative workshop, leveraging translations of Rumi by Dr.Ali Arsanjani over the course of the past 30 years, and other translations, to explore the motivating concepts of love, longing, separation and the Quest as they unfold in the poetry of Rumi.
These concepts will be elaborated by parsing verses of Rumi’s masterworks, the Couplets of Inner Meaning and the Book of the Sun (Shams). These delicate points will motivate us to explore our own expressions of these concepts in our hearts and minds and will be used as prompts in this generative workshop where poets and writers will be given time to write, revise, present and critique in a safely structured and guided environment.
These key concepts of Universal love, longing, devotion ring true even today in modern times will be used to demonstrate a set of 15 key poetry writing skills for aspiring and seasoned writers and poets alike.
We will also explore various poetic forms such as the blank verse, the rhyming couplet format, the pantoum and the ghazal in further detail .
Rumi’s Poetry Through the Years
Rumi has been called the most popular poet in the US, even though he live in the 13th century, thanks to the multitude of translations done ranging from the 1900- to the present day.
Rumi brings the experience of love, both to a wordly love and Divine Love from the Transcendental aspect of life in his mystical poetry, through his nearly 64,000 verses of detailed stories and powerful, gripping yet lev-filled ghazals .
He describes complex notions of emotional intelligence, captivated love and loss, with an undercurrent of spirituality that melds the divine with the mundane in an almost heavenly union.
He renders deeply emotional, hard to reach inner feelings and amorphous spiritual concepts in accessible, down-to-earth terms. He takes us on a journey that awakens the sense of the quest for Love or the refinement of the quest of Love to love of the Divine with gentle yet warrior-like courage, deep humility and unflinching clarity.
This affords a distinct freshness of perspective for poets and writers who would like to take a next step in their craft through the principles, motivations and inspirations with which Rumi the muse provides us.
Rumi Writer's Workshops 