Novel Thinking and Creativity for the Digital Age

An Arts and Culture Program

Join us for a program that celebrates the rich creative and cultural diversity in Pierce County Communities through arts and culture experiences.

This course, presented by Blair Nishkian, local poet, writer, and illustrator, will explore rediscovering imagination and creative thinking through embracing the small, taken-for-granted details of everyday life. The shape of a backpack, the smell of the city, the bumps on an orange peel, or the sound of a flicked glass all have subconscious associations worth exploring. How can we as human beings shake off the cynicism of an overstimulating modern age and reconnect with a sense of wonder for small things? In what way can this appreciation for the concrete and the sensual enhance not only our writing, but our speech, our thinking, our mental health, and our outlook on living?

Join Blair for a discussion on reframing the way we look at ordinary things, and how to train our brains on free association as an everyday habit, so we can better express ourselves in our relationships and our art. Would you like to be a happier, less self-conscious person? Would you like to be a better poet and better writer? It starts with engaging with life, good or bad or in between, and accepting what's right in front of you as real and worth admiring.

Suggested reading: Fruitflesh, by Gayle Brandeis, and any of your favorite poems or stories that you think capture the sensual details of our world beautifully. Be ready to share!

Upcoming events