This session has been cancelled and will be rescheduled for a later date. To participate in the rescheduled session, please email programs@smithcenter.org.
with Gayle Danley, national & international poetry slam champion
Gayle Performing in Frederick, MD
Slam poetry began in Chicago’s bars and coffeehouses in the late 1980’s. This phenomenal blend of spoken and written word turns every willing soul into a poet while providing relief from the stresses of the day. Master teaching artist Gayle Danley has shared her down-on-the-floor style of performance poetry all over the country in classrooms, lecture halls, theatres and even on CBS’ 60 minutes.
Join her for much laughter, emotion, comfort, understanding and instruction in the art of slam poetry. Her 4-step process has been tried in the fire and proven to be an effective antidote to the blues of the day and the isolation that threatens to drive us mad!
Suggested Donation: $15
Poem for my Sisters With Sons:
Breathe:
Pull a clean fist of air inside your self
and let it rest there
wide and unfrightened inside your belly
asking for nothing
Remember when the baby boy was there
Stirring and fighting and kicking things around
inside of you.
And where is he now?
Kicking at air
asking for everything
Defiance rippling on the edge of his skin
Beautiful as water
And do not worry if your brown boy
doesn’t smile enough
as long as he still smiles at you:
over dinner
over the news
from beneath a curtain of hair tangled and sprawled,
it is enough
Does he still know your name?
Good.
Does he still reach for you when there is blood
Does he still make you want to kill him on Monday mornings
Soon after crushing the competition at Asheville’s National Poetry Slam in 1994, Gayle Danley entered America’s classrooms teaching thousands of children how to access their emotions through the force of words. She performed and taught her way from Maryland Young Audience’s Artist of the Year, to National Young Audience’s Artist of the Year. She’s also both a former national and international poetry slam champion. CBS 60 Minutes profiled her work with middle schoolers as well as the Baltimore Sun, Washington Post and New York Times.
For the past five years, Gayle’s Grieffriend sessions have helped women who are living with AIDS, widows, incarcerated youth and those struggling with drug addiction and recovery use poetry to cope and bravely face life’s challenges.
Gayle was recently named Maryland Library Association Poet of the Year.
This program is being offered virtually through Zoom. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, register by clicking the RSVP button above or by emailing programs@smithcenter.org.
You will receive the Zoom information no later than the morning of your program.
with Ravenna Raven
in partnership with the Good Listening Project
As a Listener Poet, people trust you to hold space for their stories and emotions. In creating this space, both participants can experience the healing power of listening. The Good Listening Project is a nonprofit that promotes cultures of listening to support wellbeing in healthcare communities. These conversations strengthen the social fabric within healthcare systems, amplify unheard voices, and foster empathy among healthcare professionals. These healing spaces contribute to a connected culture where people care about and support each other, enhancing patient care and the overall healthcare experience.
In this interactive workshop, Listener Poet Ravenna Raven will share tips about her process from starting a conversation with someone you don’t know to creating a poem for them using their words, and will then invite you to try these techniques with someone else in the group. You will be invited to experience and practice deep listening, which can have positive ripple effects, connect with a small group to reflect on your experiences and the themes that emerge from your poems, and support resilience and wellbeing using poetry and conversation as inspiration.
Supplies Needed: Writing utensil and paper, or digital document.
Suggested Donation: $15
About Ravenna Raven
Ravenna Raven works as a Listener Poet at hospitals, healing centers, and national healthcare conferences, and leads The Good Listening Project’s Certified Listener Poet course. Ravenna’s early childhood experiences with first responders, surgeons, and hospice nurses propelled her toward writing as a practice for healing and making meaningful connections with others. She teaches creative writing, reading development, and restorative yoga to students of all ages.
This program is being offered virtually through Zoom. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, register by clicking the RSVP button above or by emailingolivia@smithcenter.org.
You will receive the Zoom information no later than the morning of your program.
with Theresa Esterlund
Practice mindfulness in a new way and open to being – with yourself, with each other, with the present moment. In this workshop, you’ll be guided in a slow looking activity around a single work of art from the Joan Hisaoka gallery as a technique for accessing inner wisdom and sparking creative flow. In conjunction with this mindfulness practice, you’ll use a series of prompts and poetry writing techniques to express yourself through the written word, individually and collectively. You’ll discover new insights and fresh perspectives as you build empathy and learn to integrate this type of practice into your journey.
By slowing down as you look, you’ll be invited to explore personal insights, reflections, and ideas. You’ll also have an opportunity to practice opening to other perspectives and points of view through group participation. Slow looking (or slow art) comes out of the “slow” movement and is often intended to help you look at and learn about artwork, especially if you are not as comfortable or familiar with art. It can be applied to any kind of looking or listening (at a tree, a piece of music, another person), and when infused with mindfulness, it can be a powerful way to connect with yourself and each other.
Suggested Donation: $15/session
About Theresa Esterlund
Theresa Esterlund is an artist, educator, and mindfulness guide whose teaching draws from her deep experience and expertise. In her mindfulness practices, she facilitates pathways for integrated mindful living, creating environments for personal exploration and transformation that are based on individual experiences. Theresa’s collages are windows that open to the inside—as well as abstract landscapes and other arrangements. She currently brings her love of gathering, sorting, and composing to letterpress, which also gives her a path to integrate words and phrases from her poetry. After retiring from a professional career in museum education, Theresa channeled her vision to inspire compassionate connections into a stationery business, Open to Being, that reflects the intersection of her mindfulness and artistic practices.
This program is being offered virtually through Zoom. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, register by clicking the RSVP button above or by emailing olivia@smithcenter.org.
You will receive the Zoom information no later than the morning of your program.
with Gayle Danley, national & international poetry slam champion
Gayle Performing in Frederick, MD
Slam poetry began in Chicago’s bars and coffeehouses in the late 1980’s. This phenomenal blend of spoken and written word turns every willing soul into a poet while providing relief from the stresses of the day. Master teaching artist Gayle Danley has shared her down-on-the-floor style of performance poetry all over the country in classrooms, lecture halls, theatres and even on CBS’ 60 minutes.
Join her for much laughter, emotion, comfort, understanding and instruction in the art of slam poetry. Her 4-step process has been tried in the fire and proven to be an effective antidote to the blues of the day and the isolation that threatens to drive us mad!
Suggested Donation: $15
Poem for my Sisters With Sons:
Breathe:
Pull a clean fist of air inside your self
and let it rest there
wide and unfrightened inside your belly
asking for nothing
Remember when the baby boy was there
Stirring and fighting and kicking things around
inside of you.
And where is he now?
Kicking at air
asking for everything
Defiance rippling on the edge of his skin
Beautiful as water
And do not worry if your brown boy
doesn’t smile enough
as long as he still smiles at you:
over dinner
over the news
from beneath a curtain of hair tangled and sprawled,
it is enough
Does he still know your name?
Good.
Does he still reach for you when there is blood
Does he still make you want to kill him on Monday mornings
Soon after crushing the competition at Asheville’s National Poetry Slam in 1994, Gayle Danley entered America’s classrooms teaching thousands of children how to access their emotions through the force of words. She performed and taught her way from Maryland Young Audience’s Artist of the Year, to National Young Audience’s Artist of the Year. She’s also both a former national and international poetry slam champion. CBS 60 Minutes profiled her work with middle schoolers as well as the Baltimore Sun, Washington Post and New York Times.
For the past five years, Gayle’s Grieffriend sessions have helped women who are living with AIDS, widows, incarcerated youth and those struggling with drug addiction and recovery use poetry to cope and bravely face life’s challenges.
Gayle was recently named Maryland Library Association Poet of the Year.
This program is being offered virtually through Zoom. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, register by clicking the RSVP button above or by emailingolivia@smithcenter.org.
You will receive the Zoom information no later than the morning of your program.
with Theresa Esterlund
Practice mindfulness in a new way and open to being – with yourself, with each other, with the present moment. In this workshop, you’ll be guided in a slow looking activity around a single work of art from the Joan Hisaoka gallery as a technique for accessing inner wisdom and sparking creative flow. In conjunction with this mindfulness practice, you’ll use a series of prompts and poetry writing techniques to express yourself through the written word, individually and collectively. You’ll discover new insights and fresh perspectives as you build empathy and learn to integrate this type of practice into your journey.
By slowing down as you look, you’ll be invited to explore personal insights, reflections, and ideas. You’ll also have an opportunity to practice opening to other perspectives and points of view through group participation. Slow looking (or slow art) comes out of the “slow” movement and is often intended to help you look at and learn about artwork, especially if you are not as comfortable or familiar with art. It can be applied to any kind of looking or listening (at a tree, a piece of music, another person), and when infused with mindfulness, it can be a powerful way to connect with yourself and each other.
Suggested Donation: $15/session
About Theresa Esterlund
Theresa Esterlund is an artist, educator, and mindfulness guide whose teaching draws from her deep experience and expertise. In her mindfulness practices, she facilitates pathways for integrated mindful living, creating environments for personal exploration and transformation that are based on individual experiences. Theresa’s collages are windows that open to the inside—as well as abstract landscapes and other arrangements. She currently brings her love of gathering, sorting, and composing to letterpress, which also gives her a path to integrate words and phrases from her poetry. After retiring from a professional career in museum education, Theresa channeled her vision to inspire compassionate connections into a stationery business, Open to Being, that reflects the intersection of her mindfulness and artistic practices. She is also the Executive Director of UpCycle Creative Reuse Center, an Alexandria-based non-profit that connects creativity and conservation by providing a resource center for reuse materials and a creative making space.
This program is being offered virtually through Zoom. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, register by clicking the RSVP button above or by emailing olivia@smithcenter.org.
You will receive the Zoom information no later than the morning of your program.
with Gayle Danley, national & international poetry slam champion
Gayle Performing in Frederick, MD
Slam poetry began in Chicago’s bars and coffeehouses in the late 1980’s. This phenomenal blend of spoken and written word turns every willing soul into a poet while providing relief from the stresses of the day. Master teaching artist Gayle Danley has shared her down-on-the-floor style of performance poetry all over the country in classrooms, lecture halls, theatres and even on CBS’ 60 minutes.
Join her for much laughter, emotion, comfort, understanding and instruction in the art of slam poetry. Her 4-step process has been tried in the fire and proven to be an effective antidote to the blues of the day and the isolation that threatens to drive us mad!
Suggested Donation: $15
Poem for my Sisters With Sons:
Breathe:
Pull a clean fist of air inside your self
and let it rest there
wide and unfrightened inside your belly
asking for nothing
Remember when the baby boy was there
Stirring and fighting and kicking things around
inside of you.
And where is he now?
Kicking at air
asking for everything
Defiance rippling on the edge of his skin
Beautiful as water
And do not worry if your brown boy
doesn’t smile enough
as long as he still smiles at you:
over dinner
over the news
from beneath a curtain of hair tangled and sprawled,
it is enough
Does he still know your name?
Good.
Does he still reach for you when there is blood
Does he still make you want to kill him on Monday mornings
Soon after crushing the competition at Asheville’s National Poetry Slam in 1994, Gayle Danley entered America’s classrooms teaching thousands of children how to access their emotions through the force of words. She performed and taught her way from Maryland Young Audience’s Artist of the Year, to National Young Audience’s Artist of the Year. She’s also both a former national and international poetry slam champion. CBS 60 Minutes profiled her work with middle schoolers as well as the Baltimore Sun, Washington Post and New York Times.
For the past five years, Gayle’s Grieffriend sessions have helped women who are living with AIDS, widows, incarcerated youth and those struggling with drug addiction and recovery use poetry to cope and bravely face life’s challenges.
Gayle was recently named Maryland Library Association Poet of the Year.
This program is being offered virtually through Zoom. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, register by clicking the RSVP button above or by emailing olivia@smithcenter.org.
You will receive the Zoom information no later than the morning of your program.
with Gayle Danley, national & international poetry slam champion
Gayle Performing in Frederick, MD
Slam poetry began in Chicago’s bars and coffeehouses in the late 1980’s. This phenomenal blend of spoken and written word turns every willing soul into a poet while providing relief from the stresses of the day. Master teaching artist Gayle Danley has shared her down-on-the-floor style of performance poetry all over the country in classrooms, lecture halls, theatres and even on CBS’ 60 minutes.
Join her for much laughter, emotion, comfort, understanding and instruction in the art of slam poetry. Her 4-step process has been tried in the fire and proven to be an effective antidote to the blues of the day and the isolation that threatens to drive us mad!
Suggested Donation: $15
Poem for my Sisters With Sons:
Breathe:
Pull a clean fist of air inside your self
and let it rest there
wide and unfrightened inside your belly
asking for nothing
Remember when the baby boy was there
Stirring and fighting and kicking things around
inside of you.
And where is he now?
Kicking at air
asking for everything
Defiance rippling on the edge of his skin
Beautiful as water
And do not worry if your brown boy
doesn’t smile enough
as long as he still smiles at you:
over dinner
over the news
from beneath a curtain of hair tangled and sprawled,
it is enough
Does he still know your name?
Good.
Does he still reach for you when there is blood
Does he still make you want to kill him on Monday mornings
Soon after crushing the competition at Asheville’s National Poetry Slam in 1994, Gayle Danley entered America’s classrooms teaching thousands of children how to access their emotions through the force of words. She performed and taught her way from Maryland Young Audience’s Artist of the Year, to National Young Audience’s Artist of the Year. She’s also both a former national and international poetry slam champion. CBS 60 Minutes profiled her work with middle schoolers as well as the Baltimore Sun, Washington Post and New York Times.
For the past five years, Gayle’s Grieffriend sessions have helped women who are living with AIDS, widows, incarcerated youth and those struggling with drug addiction and recovery use poetry to cope and bravely face life’s challenges.
Gayle was recently named Maryland Library Association Poet of the Year.
This program is being offered virtually through Zoom. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, register by clicking the RSVP button above or by emailing programs@smithcenter.org.
You will receive the Zoom information no later than the morning of your program.
with Jodi Kanter
Writing Outside the Lines
Inspired by Smith Center’s Outside the Lines: A Creative Art Studio, this program begins with a series of partnered exercises. In our own words, we will begin to tell chapters of our own stories.
With our stories as a springboard, we will write within a variety of genres. We’ll explore a new genre each week, discovering what different writing forms have to say to us—and we to them. Genres were made to be broken—or at least mixed and matched!
Possible genres include poetry, monologue, fairytale, and film noir. Many writing workshops strive to find and / or hone a writer’s “voice.” Conversely, Writing Outside the Lines will give writers the opportunity to express themselves in an ever-expanding range of voices.
Writing Outside the Lines will be hosted on the 2nd Wednesday from 10:00-11:30am ET.
Upcoming Dates:
November 9 (last session before WOTL takes a break!)
Suggested Donation: $10
About Jodi Kanter
Jodi has been involved in theater since she was ten years old. She grew up acting and studying performance in American theater’s “Second City,” Chicago Illinois. She is currently a professor of theatre in the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at George Washington University, where she has been on faculty for nearly fifteen years. Her academic work in theater includes her book, Performing Loss: Strengthening Communities Through Theatre and Writing (2007).
Jodi’s focus on performance as a tool for individual and social healing and change has led her to create workshops, events and productions in a wide variety of settings including hospitals, schools, and prisons. Most recently, she co-created a four-month diversity and inclusion program for members of DC’s fourteen Neighborhood Village associations using the methodology of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. Jodi holds a PhD. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in dramatherapy at Lesley University.
This program is being offered virtually through Zoom. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, register by clicking the RSVP button above or by emailing programs@smithcenter.org.
You will receive the Zoom information no later than the morning of your program.
with Jodi Kanter
Writing Outside the Lines
Inspired by Smith Center’s Outside the Lines: A Creative Art Studio, this program begins with a series of partnered exercises. In our own words, we will begin to tell chapters of our own stories.
With our stories as a springboard, we will write within a variety of genres. We’ll explore a new genre each week, discovering what different writing forms have to say to us—and we to them. Genres were made to be broken—or at least mixed and matched!
Possible genres include poetry, monologue, fairytale, and film noir. Many writing workshops strive to find and / or hone a writer’s “voice.” Conversely, Writing Outside the Lines will give writers the opportunity to express themselves in an ever-expanding range of voices.
Writing Outside the Lines will be hosted on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays from 10:30-12:00pm ET.
Upcoming Dates:
October 26 (CANCELLED)
November 9 (last session before WOTL takes a break!)
Suggested Donation: $10
About Jodi Kanter
Jodi has been involved in theater since she was ten years old. She grew up acting and studying performance in American theater’s “Second City,” Chicago Illinois. She is currently a professor of theatre in the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at George Washington University, where she has been on faculty for nearly fifteen years. Her academic work in theater includes her book, Performing Loss: Strengthening Communities Through Theatre and Writing (2007).
Jodi’s focus on performance as a tool for individual and social healing and change has led her to create workshops, events and productions in a wide variety of settings including hospitals, schools, and prisons. Most recently, she co-created a four-month diversity and inclusion program for members of DC’s fourteen Neighborhood Village associations using the methodology of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. Jodi holds a PhD. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in dramatherapy at Lesley University.
This program is being offered virtually through Zoom. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, register by clicking the RSVP button above or by emailing programs@smithcenter.org.
You will receive the Zoom information no later than the morning of your program.
with Jodi Kanter
Writing Outside the Lines
Inspired by Smith Center’s Outside the Lines: A Creative Art Studio, this program begins with a series of partnered exercises. In our own words, we will begin to tell chapters of our own stories.
With our stories as a springboard, we will write within a variety of genres. We’ll explore a new genre each week, discovering what different writing forms have to say to us—and we to them. Genres were made to be broken—or at least mixed and matched!
Possible genres include poetry, monologue, fairytale, and film noir. Many writing workshops strive to find and / or hone a writer’s “voice.” Conversely, Writing Outside the Lines will give writers the opportunity to express themselves in an ever-expanding range of voices.
Writing Outside the Lines will be hosted on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays from 10:30-12:00pm ET.
Upcoming Dates:
October 12 & 26
November 9 & 23
December 14
Suggested Donation: $10
About Jodi Kanter
Jodi has been involved in theater since she was ten years old. She grew up acting and studying performance in American theater’s “Second City,” Chicago Illinois. She is currently a professor of theatre in the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at George Washington University, where she has been on faculty for nearly fifteen years. Her academic work in theater includes her book, Performing Loss: Strengthening Communities Through Theatre and Writing (2007).
Jodi’s focus on performance as a tool for individual and social healing and change has led her to create workshops, events and productions in a wide variety of settings including hospitals, schools, and prisons. Most recently, she co-created a four-month diversity and inclusion program for members of DC’s fourteen Neighborhood Village associations using the methodology of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. Jodi holds a PhD. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in dramatherapy at Lesley University.
