A workshop combining family constellations and creative writing for therapeutic purposes.
Lapidus News
Words, wellness and writing!
In 2018, The Centre for Work Related Studies at the University of Chester is celebrating 20 years of innovative programmes delivering negotiated work based learning across the globe. Their celebration is focusing on how their unique approach facilitates working, learning and adapting.
Anyone who visits Aldeburgh on the weekend of 3rd - 5th November will be delighted with an offering of poetry, music, film and art in the town by the sea.
Last Saturday, 30th September, instead of our usual meeting at the Poetry Cafe, London Lapidus met in Tate Britian and had a very interesting, thought provoking and inspiring afternoon.
For anyone interested in developing their physical storytelling skills to build confidence and enhance emotional mental wellbeing. Workshops starting on 30 October.
I started working with yoga teacher Ash Bond four years ago. At that time I had recently completed my yoga teacher training and was about to embark on an MA in Creative Writing.
Join us as we celebrate the launch of the newest regional group to join Lapidus International: Lapidus Wales.
“In every community, there is work to be done.
In every nation, there are wounds to heal.
In every heart, there is the power to do it.”
Marianne Williamson
I'm pinching myself as I sit in Professor Tony Attwood's glass consulting room, looking out over a tropical garden of palms and guava trees down towards a creek surrounded by lush greenery. As he talks, a two foot long, scaly green and yellow lizard hops onto a rock outside his window, tail thrashing. It's all I can do not to squeak.
For our September meeting we have decided to try something new, facilitated by Stephen Bush, a regular at our London Lapidus meetings.
I’ve journaled and made art for over 60 years now, but for many of those years I thought of it as simply a pastime.
Then one day I went down a deep, dark, rabbit hole and just by chance the writing and art changed.
The art got abstract and the writing came from the bottom of that deep, dark hole. I had no understanding of the whys or wherefores but the whole process helped me to reflect on the pain, the sadness and the angry resentments and to heal so that I could move on and pull myself up into a place of wellbeing, a place where the sun shone more often. But it never lasted and I came to understand that there was more to this and I needed to know what the more was. I thought school might have some answers so I took another BA which allowed me to enroll in a Master of Arts in Integrated Studies through Athabasca University by distance … and it is quite a distance from Southern Ontario to Central Alberta.
For many of us, this year has been challenging, drawing on our depths of compassion and humour, demanding that we strive harder to keep our balance in choppy waters. Events in the Middle East, particularly Syria, deaths of iconic figures, surprises in the democratic process in the West, news about the effects of global warming have placed us in a position now where we may have to adjust the stand that we wish to take, our values and our priorities. It is certainly a time of change, when we need to think differently and decide what to keep and what to discard. Events within Lapidus have led us to a position in 2016 when we have reviewed our history, our core ideology and have begun to look towards the future. Some key members of the Board with a long-term relationship with the company have moved away and some fresh faces have stepped up. We felt it important to forge a strong working relationship between the team, with those who are paid by Lapidus and with our members. To that end, Barbara made contact with a number of regional groups and visited them. Lisa continued to steer the activities of the (new) Digital Editor (Christine) and our Membership Secretary (Caleb).
Review of A Prism for the Sun by Rose Flint
Published by Oversteps Books, Devon 2015 by Fiona Hamilton
Rose Flint's fifth collection A Prism for the Sun opens our senses to birds, animals, elements, flora, while attentively contemplating human involvement with other-than-human worlds. She draws us close, almost inside, each moment, offering shifting perspectives on these interconnections, giving spaces for us to consider their prismatic forms.
In 'Marking china-blue' the physical sensation of cold sea on hands begins the poem. The lines achieve a fluidity as the poet attempts to ‘pull’ waves forward and they separate braid-like around her fingers. This interconnects with thoughts of the writer or artist’s efforts to mark or record a colour - aquamarine - or a state. By staying with the motions of the waves, body and water become almost indistinguishable:
Lapidus Research Day, July 2015
Huge thanks to everyone who came along to the July Research Day, and to Metanoia Institute for providing such a wonderful venue. It was a vibrant day, covering a wide range of topics. Below are links to resources from the event, including information from our displays and slides and notes from some of the sessions:
Lapidus Day 2015
The national Lapidus day conference took place in Cardiff on Saturday 14 March 2015.
Cardiff Metropolitan University, Llandaff Campus.
PROGRAMME
Click here for the Lapidus Day Programme
Our keynote speakers were Professor Jeff Wallace, Professor of English and Creative Writing, at Cardiff Metropolitan University and Fiona Hamilton. Jeff talked about the journey leading to his interest in therapeutic writing; Fiona explored the writing process that led to her book Bite Sized - a story in verse, about a mother's perspective on her child's eating disorder.
Jeff Wallace is Professor of English at Cardiff Metropolitan University. He is the author of Beginning Modernism (2011) and D. H. Lawrence, Science and the Posthuman (2005), and the editor of books on Darwin's Origin of Species, Raymond Williams and Gothic Modernism. He is a specialist in the study of literature and science.
Review – Crown of Thorns by Bethany W Pope
(Oneiros Books 2013, price £5)
Bethany Pope’s latest collection Crown of Thorns describes itself on the title page as a ‘Marriage of Forms’. Indeed it is the formal structure the poet employs in this book, with such elegance and apparent ease, which must be first and foremost admired. A marriage is a union and Pope’s collection, a complex weaving of narrative is conceived as a single poem which tells the story of family – Pope’s own family and her place in it. And quite a story it is too. The story is told unflinchingly through a series of sonnet crowns that are variously and ingeniously linked, by theme, by storyline, even by bloodline. The final section of the book ‘Bloodlines’, consisting of 45 sonnets subdivided into three sections is a further variation on the sonnet crown form described by Pope as an Emperors Crown. The result is an epic, almost biblical depiction of ancestral ties and the family tree to which the poet belongs. In the first of these 45 sonnets Pope writes The/History of family sets the future in its tread. This is the adage on which the entire book rests.
Lapidus Weekend 2013
It was good to see Lapidus members and guests from all over the UK gathered in Bristol for the Lapidus weekend, on 5-6th October 2013. The sun shone, Bristol looked beautiful and the venue - Engineers' House - was welcoming and very comfortable.
The weekend was a wonderful opportunity to catch up with others with an interest and/or working in writing and wellbeing, and hear guest speakers Ted Bowman on how to Pack Your Bag with Words, (the man is amazing) and poet Matt Harvey on tennis and conkers and many other things.
There were a range of workshops including one on the therapeutic benefits of Hip Hop for bereaved young people by Kiran Bangerh.
Manu Rodriguez spoke on writing another perspective on disability/ability and Victoria Field about the training she is offering to become a Poetry Therapist. This is the first time this training has been available in the UK. Contact Vicky for more details.
Accreditation: McLoughlin
Accreditation in the field of literary arts in health and social care
by Dominic McLoughlin Sessional Lecturer in Counselling at Birkbeck, University of London FCE, and for the MA in Creative Writing for Personal Development at CCE, University of Sussex. 2004
This contribution to the debate on accreditation was originally sought from the Writing for Personal Development special interest group within Lapidus. This group was formed to cater for those in the membership who have an interest in the field of writing for personal development as participants rather than as practitioners, i.e. people who don’t necessarily want to run workshops for other people. Although I was one of the founder members of the group I have not consulted formally with members of the special interest group so in no way can I speak on their behalf. I do have personal experience of using writing as a way of recovering from depression, but my contribution here is mostly an exercise in imaginative thinking. I have asked myself what might the key issues be around accreditation from the ‘user’ or client perspective?
On Becoming a Poetry Therapist
by Victoria Field
A description and critical appraisal of the US National Association of Poetry Therapy accreditation process and its possible application as a model for the UK. I am currently approaching accreditation as a Poetry Therapist and, increasingly, I am being contacted by others in this country thinking of undertaking this qualification. This is possibly due to the absence of any other practitioner-based training in the UK. I feel it would be very useful for Lapidus to react to this existing model as well as devising its own accreditation policy from scratch. I will begin by presenting a poem:
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