An Experiential Workshop for the Living/Dying Project
by John Fox, PPM
Saturday, March 7, 2026
10am-11:30am PST
No previous experience with poetry is needed!
Poem-making, when approached as a healing and transformational process, rather than with analysis and judgment, provides an opportunity for deep inner healing. It encourages connection and meaning. This is especially true when we share this experience within a community of listeners who respond and bear witness with care and non-invasive curiosity.
We will dig into finding your creative voice that says YES to Life, your creative voice that may meet dying with heart, and welcomes you to speak up for what matters to you. In these challenging days, our voice, your voice, deserves to be given more room.
These lines from the poem A Ritual to Read to Each Other catch the sense and spirit of what I mean:
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
William Stafford
Drawing from a splendid range of sources, John will encourage you to experiment with poetic tools of metaphor, sound, rhythm, imagery and symbol as remedies to connect with your wholeness and live with greater heart.
The talk and the poetry booklet you receive will, via direct experience, provide techniques and creative ways of connecting with poetry as a volunteer, as a helping professional, as a client of the Living/Dying Project.
We will hear poems that inspire and evoke, we will use writing prompts that tune us respond to life’s challenges, an appreciation of community, and blessings of common things.
John Fox is a poet, educator, and author. His books include, Finding What You Didn’t Lose: Expressing Your Truth and Creativity through Poem-Making (1995) and Poetic Medicine: The Healing Art of Poem-Making (1997). His work is featured in the 2008 PBS documentary Healing Words: Poetry & Medicine.
John has taught as associate adjunct professor in California at Institutes and Universities over the last 25 years. He is Founder of The Institute for Poetic Medicine a nonprofit, which provides poetry-as-healer to marginalized communities and people across the United States and around the world.
John has known RamDev Dale Borglum for 50 years when he was in contact with Ram Dass and the Hanuman Foundation. What Dale wrote at that time influenced John’s call to service. John had close contact with Stephen Levine and was profoundly impacted by contact with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.
You can find out more about his work at www.poeticmedicine.org
