I’m delighted to offer my 30-Day Heart’s Compass Tarot Challenge again this year in celebration of National Poetry Writing Month. What does that mean, to write tarot poetry? This course gives you a beautiful chance to drop in and connect daily with your heart, connect to tarot imagery for inspiration, learn more about tarot and its eclectic variety of interpretations and images, connect to poetry, and spend time journaling and drafting your own form of writing in response. You come to know yourself, the tarot, and poetry while creating new work. Traveling through this landscape, whether you are new to tarot or a forever-years-long tarot enthusiast, this is the kind of adventure that is powerful to take with a friend (I devoted a chapter,”Tarot for Two,” to the joy of finding a tarot buddy in my Heart’s Compass Tarot workbook).

We will meet once a week over zoom to write together, but the rest of the month you write on your own. In addition to the visual prompts of the tarot card of the day, writing prompts pair existing published poems by local, national and international poets with the energy of the tarot card under study. While I provide tarot card images for your use, you are also welcome to use your own tarot deck/s for this course.

Each year we take a wonderful journey and create powerful work; here is an article about the power of combining tarot exploration with poetry writing: Four Ways to Use Tarot to Write Poetry, and here’s a video: 30 Day Tarot Poetry Challenge Reading recorded at the end of one of our 30 day sessions I invite you to watch to gain an idea of what this class offers.

Course Nuts and Bolts: You’ll receive an email every morning with your tarot poetry prompt during the month of April. Your first prompt comes to your inbox April 1st; our first zoom session will be on Friday April 7, 2023, at Noon PST. We will continue to meet on Fridays to write together and share insights, culminating in a final tarot poetry reading of your work at the end of the month (TBA).

Pencil, paper, and open heart are the only materials you’ll need.

Prompts start going out on April 1; two-step registration below:

1. Sign up here to receive your 30 days of prompts and zoom invitations delivered to your inbox: Heart’s Compass 30 Day Tarot Poetry Challenge
2. Payment accepted here through Heart’s Compass Tarot (PayPal.me) link; you will also receive a welcome email when you sign up with additional options for payment. Cost is $99.

This class is for you if:

• you are tarot curious or tarot savvy
• you like to write ekphrastic poetry (poetry based on art)
• you wish to create new poetry over the course of 30 days
• you enjoy sharing in a dynamic and nurturing creative environment

 You receive:

30 daily prompts delivered to your email inbox that contain:

• ekphrastic inspiration in the form of 3 different versions of the same tarot card
• interpretations for the cards
• an example poem embodying the energy of the card
• a prompt for you to write your own tarot-inspired poem
• 5 sessions on zoom including a final evening reading (come read your favorite poem from the month)

You have the opportunity to learn:

A heart’s compass tarot approach to engaging with tarot imagery, poetry, and the writing of your own poems. Tarot cards covered: the 21 Major Arcana, 4 Aces, and Page, Knight, Queen and King of Disks (*last year we covered the Wands Family)

You come out of the month with:

• New poems!
• A deeper understanding of the tarot and yourself in relation to tarot’s imagery
• A deeper understanding of the tarot through the lens of the example poems chosen to illuminate the energy behind each tarot card
• A stronger connection to writing community

Course dates:

• First Zoom meeting: Friday April 7: Tarot haiku, Noon PST
• Friday April 14: Tarot Imagery, Noon PST
• Friday April 21: Tarot and Sound play, Noon PST
• Friday April 28: Tarot and Music Noon PST
• Tarot Poetry Reading from work created: TBA

Course Cost:

$99

Two-step registration:

1. Sign up here to receive your 30 days of prompts and zoom invitations delivered to your inbox: Heart’s Compass 30 Day Tarot Poetry Challenge
2. Payment accepted here through Heart’s Compass Tarot (PayPal.me) link; you will also receive a welcome email when you sign up with additional options for payment. Cost is $99.

Example poem and tarot card pairings: You’ll see tarot cards for which poems appear in my workbook, Heart’s Compass Tarot: Discover Tarot Journaling and Create Your Own Cards—such as those for the beginning of the tarot deck and everyone’s tarot journey, The Fool: ruth weiss’s “A Fools Journey.” And for the internal spiritual guide, The Priestess, we have Rachel Pollack’s “The High Priestess.” For the radical eye-opener, The Tower we will read Marianela Medrano’s “Kali, The Awakener.”

This year’s fabulous field of additional poets include Diane Gilliam, Katie Manning, Sandra McPherson, Jane Muschenetz, Judy Reeves, Barbara Rockman, Christine Stewart, Ruth Thompson, Penina Ava Taesali and more. Along with tarot art featured in Heart’s Compass Tarot, you’ll encounter tarot images from the Inner Child deck, The Poet Tarot, Counterculture Tarot (Journeying the 60s), Art Tarot (created by a group of musicians, including Art Lande), and several others. I’ll see you there, where tarot and poetry meet, on the field of the heart.

*Paper and pencil are the only required materials; optional supporting materials: Heart’s Compass Tarot.

Additional Link of Interest:

Here’s a post I shared earlier that contains a poem I wrote based on the Strength card, which also appears in my memoir in poems, The Fool in the Corn (Saddle Road Press, 2022).