A weekend of workshops! Workshops are limited to fifteen participants. You must register for the festival to register for a workshop. The schedule for the 2024 workshops will be posted soon.
Workshop Descriptions
Poetry and Story with Pádraig Ó Tuama
Some poems tell stories, with elements of narrative: beginnings, middle, ends, conclusions, denouements. They also include aspects of time, place, action and character. However they also have hte presence of something else, that poetic dynamic that is both an inclusion and an exclusion. The presence of blank space on a page means the poem goes in many ways.
This workshop will explore some narrative poems — of varying lengths — and will provide some generative prompts for your own writing.
Talking Back with Kimiko Hahn
Creating writing prompts based on favorite poems.” In this workshop, I will present a few short poems from bygone writers and show how easy it is to make a writing prompt that responds to them or to their poems. This can be both a productive dimension of one’s writing practice and also one of the simplest ways to get past “writer’s block.” Our generative workshop is for all levels. Be prepared for in-class writing and sharing.
The Wonder of Small Things: Mindful Description in Poetry with James Crews
In this generative workshop, we’ll discuss how certain poems help us access the wonder & awe present in otherwise ordinary moments through mindful, attentive description. We will work from writing prompts based on the poems we discuss, practicing the art of description in the moment.
Strata with Danusha Laméris
“Now I understand, there are two melodies playing, one below the other.” (from ‘The Second Music’ by Annie Lighthart)
Whenever one thing is happening, something else is happening underneath. We’re in line at the grocery store, but can’t stop thinking about the person we kissed the night before. Eating dinner at a French bistro, we imagine what we just saw in the news. A person at a party says something that shocks us and we freeze, answer politely. We carry these layers throughout our day. I think of them as strata, like the layers of the earth. We might see a grassy surface, but what’s underneath? And then, what’s underneath that? In this workshop, we’ll explore how to fold one moment over/under another in our writing, helping us to create more complex and nuanced narratives.
Contemplating Mortality to Fuel Your Writing Practice with ire’ne lara silva
This workshop will primarily feature discussions and writing exercises centered on mortality, life, and writing goals. The intent is to move away from fear and towards truth, to sit comfortably or uncomfortably with reminders of our mortality, to both grieve and celebrate our losses, and to strategize how a realistic but peaceful relationship with our mortality can fuel us as artists.
Earth Verse with Naomi Shihab Nye
When trouble comes in the human world, you might make a little song from the wild that offers consolation. From the Gnomic Verses in Old English, to the Tao te Ching, and the writings of Dorothy Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, and Mary Oliver, we have cherished lyric remedies speaking the language of earth for human comfort. In this workshop, we will start with close observations from your landscapes, and compose an archive of consolations for use as our need comes. [Naomi will lead this workshop designed by Kim Stafford, who cannot be with us this year, with her own takes on the topic and some of his!]
Setting and Writing the Self with José Antonio Rodríguez
Of the multiple elements of creative writing at our disposal, setting is often overlooked or underdeveloped because it is erroneously seen as static, as backdrop to the more central plot and character. Setting is never simply window dressing and is always functioning in relation to the character(s) in both prose and poetry. In this session we will look at what constitutes setting and its purpose in our writing about our lives/experiences. The session will then incorporate writing and discussion.
Writing the Prose Poem with David Meischen
David Meischen will address this question: What to do if the poem is about movement and not lines, about the spill of image / metaphor / language and not lines, about the momentum of narrative and not lines? Participants will read several prose poems and work on drafting one of their own.
Intersections of the Other and the Personal in the Ekphrastic Poem with David Meischen
An effective ekphrastic poem goes beyond language that recreates a work of art. This workshop will examine ekphrastic poems that explore how a work of art enhances poets’ understanding of the deeply personal, the broadly universal. Drafting time included.
The Magic of Directness with Nick Courtright
Dickinson said “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant,” and that’s great advice 90% of the time. But what about the other 10%? In this workshop, we’ll investigate the magic of directness, of just saying what you mean to say, even when it’s “unpoetic.” Through example poems and generative prompts we will practice directness as a way to use humor, tell the truth (or tell a lie), and find more freedom in what you create.
Metaphor and Simile: The Inner Workings with William Wenthe
When Elizabeth Bishop describes fireflies rising “exactly like the bubbles in champagne,” what does she mean by “exactly”? We all know what a metaphor or simile is, but do we know what, exactly, metaphors and similes do in a poem? How do metaphor and simile work differently from each other, and what is at stake in this difference? Moving beyond definitions, we’ll consider them as psychological processes, as ways of thinking and feeling within a poem. We’ll look at how these moves can develop the psychological and dramatic possibilities in our poems; how they can create plot and structure, surprise and resolution. (For instance, how does a poem that begins with a metaphor affect us differently than one that arrives at a metaphor?) We’ll look at some published poems for telling uses of metaphor and simile, and look at your own poems that you bring to the workshop.