Having the Conversation - About Beauty, its Possible Obligations.

Thanks to the interest of my local community Conversation number three is about to begin!

A year ago I facilitated the first Conversation, in what has become a series. In Ashes, Having the Conversation About Faith - for those of any religion and none - had been in my mind for a while as an alternative to former Lenten talks. I didn't have the minimum six to begin and cancelled. But then some of my local community approached me and suggested we'd run it a neighbours' house. It was thought there were others who'd like to come along.

There were nine there the first night and fourteen at the sixth and final night.It became evident the Conversation itself was as important as the topic and that the poems added an essential dimension, centering and returning us to layers and places within ourselves.Talking about symbols chosen initially led to Dried Feathers on Bone, a poem I included in Fear Knot (Doire, 2013).

There were people who knew a lot more about poetry than I do and others who have little exposure to it. A confidential questionnaire at the end demonstrated how much the participants valued the experience. So we did it again in the Autumn for six weeks and raised some money for the Galway Hospice. We looked at each poem, asking only what it suggested to each of us at this time and kept away - at first anyway - from an aesthetic analysis. That time we took as our starting point Having the Conversation - Continuing in Confusion and talked about the value of confusion as well as how confusing it can be to sit in the middle of it!

I thought it was time to stop while ahead but then, one of the members said - as we put down our final coffee cup (yes, there was tea/coffee afterwards for those who chose to stay and more did as time went on) he thought I might consider a Conversation About Beauty, Its Possible Obligations and I was hooked.

So next Monday evening 12 (so far) of us will sit down to talk about beauty. We'll start with Keats, definitely include some Contemporary work - we've read Carol Ann Duffy, Blake, Vaughan, & Heaney. Theo Dorgan's book of Uncommon Prayer was a good resource and we've looked at Millar duMars The God Thing. We've visited with Zbigniew Herbert, Milosz, Denis O'Driscoll and lots of Mary Oliver - and wander where the conversation and poems elicited bring us.

My local community are responsible for encouraging me to continue.Thanks to them I've had a wonderful chance to pilot a project I  hope to continue elsewhere.It has enabled me find a new way of drawing on my thirty years of group and workshop facilitation and include it with my new interest - poetry.

Contact information and further relevant details below.

POETRY READINGS

& WORKSHOPS

with Susan Lindsay

WORKSHOPS

Having a Different Conversation – About … 

Susan Lindsay is available to facilitate conversations mediated

by poetry, on particular topics. The extra dimension poetry

brings has become as much valued for itself as for what it

contributes to the conversation in these facilitated workshops.

It brings new perspective to a topic, a holding ground for 

the discussion, with the added benefit of providing a way into

discovering  poetry or a way into further enjoying it with others.

No previous experience of poetry, or the topic under discussion,

is needed. About - Faith, for those of any, or no, religion and

About - Continuing in Confusion have been recent workshop

titles. ‘... Conversation – About Beauty,its Possible Obligations 

is mooted for the future.

READINGS

Susan Lindsay is available to give readings from her books-

Fear knot (Doire Press, 2013)

Susan Lindsay’s poems are sometimes enigmatic, often startling. She is a poet acutely aware of the complexities of language, the levels of meaning a poem can have. When I read one of Susan Lindsay’s poems for the second time I always discover something quietly subversive lurking there which I missed first time around. Fear Knot is a daring collection of poems. A triumph.- Kevin Higgins

Whispering the Secrets (Doire Press, 2011)

The voice of experience wrought in lines that are lucid and direct…. this testimony of a survivor is suffused with joy and passion and a clear eyed appraisal of what it means to be mortal.

- Paula Meehan

…a book of courage and resolve. She writes of the “Fifth Province”, of confrontations and renewals, of dreams and shifting identities. … Lindsay writes poems of deep emotional control which communicate an affirmative celebratory mysticism. – Paul Perry

That was gorgeous. Beautiful writing. – RyanTubridy, 2005, The Tubridy Show, RTE Radio 1.

Susan Lindsay was born in 1950 and graduated from Trinity

College, Dublin in 1975. She followed a career in psychotherapy,

facilitation and as a consultant to organisations for thirty years.

Retired from psychotherapy, she is drawing on her former

experience to write and to facilitate workshops mediated by poetry

(such as the recently piloted Having a Different Conversation series),

as well as acting as a co-editor of Skylight 47, a biannual poetry

paper launched in association with the tenth anniversary of Over

the Edge Literary Events. In 2011 she was invited to read for

Poetry Ireland’s Introductions Series. Whispering the Secrets, her

Debut Collection of poetry, was published in 2011 by Doire Press

and a second collection Fear Knot in 2013.

Susan Lindsay Tel. 353 91 776881. 353 86 1671524. susanharrislindsay@gmail.com