Allen Koehn never thought of himself as a poet.
Koehn spent years as a Presbyterian pastor and later as a practicing therapist who trained as a Jungian analyst. But there was something about a certain style of poetry that drew him in.
“I really liked the haiku model,” he said. “A few years ago, I started writing 17-syllable haikus and putting them on Facebook. It got a nice response, so I started doing more.”
Now Koehn, who still maintains a small private practice for counseling services, is an established poet and author of the book Dancing at the Threshold. On July 29, Koehn will present a reading of his work accompanied by fellow poet and musician Teresa McNeil MacLean at the Wildling Museum of Art and Nature in Solvang. The reading is part of the museum’s ongoing poetry series.
Koehn was raised in Hollywood and eventually went to Princeton Seminary to earn a Master of Divinity degree. He was drawn to counseling and returned to school at Fuller Seminary and earned a Doctor of Ministry in counseling. He trained as a Jungian Analyst and later served as the executive director of the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles. He now serves as Emeritus Professor at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, where he was a faculty member for many years.
“I always thought, ‘I’m never going to write a book because I can only handle short things like T-shirt phrases or bumper stickers,'” Koehn said. “I like that you can get a lot into a small space but then it’s up to the person who encounters it to unpack it.”
The compact nature of haiku is one of Koehn’s favorite aspects of the medium. Through his poetry, he strives for readers to channel his work into their own experience.
“That is one of the things I like the best,” he said. “Ultimately it’s about a personal experience, but I don’t want people to have my experience. I’ve already had it. I want it to be a bridge into their experiences.”
The presentation at the Wildling Museum is meant to be a multimedia exploration into Koehn’s poetry and photography, using two screens and projectors to show words and images from the book. Part of the reading will be silent, featuring only words and images, and other parts will incorporate Koehn’s live reading.
Accompanying Koehn at the event is Teresa McNeil MacLean. MacLean, a self-taught guitarist who began writing songs 15 years ago, has taught poetry workshops in local elementary schools for 30 years through Arts Outreach and California Poets in the Schools. She said the idea for the reading came from an email from a mutual friend who suggested she could add music to a reading with Koehn.
“I love the creative process,” MacLean said. “I do many different things in different art forms. I especially love challenges.”
The challenge for MacLean is to create music that will pair well with Koehn’s haiku. She said she used the idea of the three separate stanzas for haiku to develop the music for the event.
But she still plans to improvise certain portions of the music program during his reading.
“I’m absolutely loving this kind of free rein to come up with this,” MacLean said. “Allen is going to read, and I’m going to play lightly behind him. I like the idea of just watching and listening and being in the background but present and seeing what the words lead to.”
Koehn said MacLean is inspiring to work with, in the spontaneity and accessibility of her music style. He said bringing music into something like a poetry reading helps present another element to the overall experience of art.
“It expands people’s ideas of the connections,” Koehn said. “So they don’t just start isolating art, poetry, music as if they are all different. They are all creative expressions. They can connect, overlap, and they can inform and increase a different area of understanding.”
Arts and Lifestyle Writer Rebecca Rose is never isolated. Contact her at rrose@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 26 – Aug 2, 2018.