One of Bauman's works displayed at the Omineca Arts Centre: "Exploding Eras of Afterglow"

By Tommy Osborne

Arts and Culture

Free workshop focusing on writing and mental health coming to Omineca Arts Centre

Mar 22, 2024 | 4:08 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – Erin J. Bauman, also known as the Panoptical Poet, is the Omineca Arts Centre Artist in Residence for March, and tomorrow she will be holding a free workshop named “Journaling for Mental Health.”

“We use journaling along with some pranayama and meditation techniques and tapping to kind of tap into who we are and express ourselves. Especially because in this society there’s such a push to just be happy all the time and be productive, and that’s not really what we’re all about, that’s very counter to our nature as humans. And I think it’s very important to not dwell on the negative feelings, but acknowledge those feelings and the fact that we don’t often leads to serious mental health issues for a lot of people,” Bauman said, when explaining what the workshop will be about.

Alongside the workshop, Bauman’s work is also displayed at the Arts Centre. Her penname, “the Panoptical Poet,” explains a big theme of her work.

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“The Panoptical is made up of different suffixes and prefixes and roots, and it’s meaning ‘of many views,’ because I want to try and be a poet who is… there’s so many different viewpoints in the world, and I think that there’s a bit of validity in everybody’s viewpoint, so it’s important to try and highlight all of those, especially the ones that don’t get noticed as much.”

Bauman is both a poet and artist, so her work often combines both elements to create mixed media work. Her poetry covers a wide variety of topics, which could range from complex international politics and the many points of view surrounding that, or something far more personal to her, like her love of hula hooping.

“Sometimes I’ll watch the news or hear about something going on in the world and I get really upset and then I try to think about that from the point of view of somebody involved, or sometimes I just think about like how it’s making me feel or affecting me or bothering me and what what I want to see maybe done differently or what I see is really problematic.”

Regardless of what topic she’s covering, Bauman hopes her work can inspire the audience.

“My dad always says that he’s not very creative, and he’s not the most creative person in our family because he’s a politician, but he’s made a lot of good changes as a politician. And I always think back to when he said that the poetry of Kahlil Gibran is what inspired him to be the politician he is. So I guess I hope that maybe somewhere out there is someone like my dad who’s inspired by my poetry to make great changes in the world.”

To learn more about the upcoming free workshop, you can visit the Omineca Arts Centre’s website here.

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