Workshop with Forrest Gander, Merida, 2009

Tulum, 2011 Workshops

  Diane Wakoski:  Creating a Personal Mythology   


During the four scheduled workshop sessions, each participant's work will be read and critiqued in the context of Creating A Personal Mythology. For further reference to this subject, you may consult in advance of the workshop with my various writings on the subject and, specifically, read the introduction to my new collection of poems, The Diamond Dog (Anhinga Press, 2010).


In each workshop session at least one poem by each participant will be discussed, focusing on use of trope and

figurative language in shaping the poem, as well as the underlying myths and archetypes that the poem invokes or uses.

  Jerome Rothenberg  (3 x 1.5-hour afternoon Discussions)


1. Translation as Composition & Other Forms of Othering:   A discussion of various procedures for bringing a range of other voices into the work of the poet as individual author.

2.  Ethnopoetics at the Millennium:   A review of ethnopoetics four decades after its introduction into poetic theory and practice.

3.  The Anthology as Collage & Manifesto:  A personal account of how the anthology can serve as an epic form of composition and as a means of transforming our ideas of poetry as such.


  Paul Hoover:  The Postmodern Lyric



In this workshop, we will focus on varieties of contemporary poetry, from the conceptual and machinic (Kenny Goldsmith, Newlipo,

and Flarf) to the blend of styles presented in the anthology American Hybrid and poets like Barbara Guest, Rae Armantrout, and

Lyn Hejinian who practice the "abstract lyric."  Each day, the instructor will present a range of writing forms and ideas. 

The rest of the session will be devoted to the discussion of participant writing, old and new.

  Jen Hofer: Stranger in a Strange Land: The Poetics and Processes of Translation


To translate is to work on the most local and the most global scale simultaneously. The tiniest punctuation mark, space on the page, turn of phrase must be attended to rigorously, lovingly. The larger ramifications in both directions (source language, target language; original writer, imagined audience) of the choices we make in language suggest far-reaching harmonics and reverberations in terms of the workings of power in language. Translation practice is a political act in literary terrain, and also provides a practical and philosophical model for how we—as writers, as artists—might approach difference with openness, curiosity, self-examination, willingness to listen.


This workshop is designed for writers who are engaged in translation projects and for writers who are interested in thinking about issues of translation as they relate to writing practices in English (i.e. non-translator writers).We will read both texts in translation and texts about translation. We will consider some of the questions that have provided the foundations for modern and contemporary theories of translation, including (but not limited to) questions of “americanization” vs. “foreignization,” “faithfulness” vs. “betrayal,” the effects of different translation choices on the target language, questions of audience and the reception of foreign texts, and the political ramifications of translation practice.We will also consider recent investigations into the poetics and politics of translation, among them: nomadic discourses and questions of “otherness,” “untranslatable” texts, translation as activist literary practice, and writing as translation.This is a hands-on workshop: please come ready to write or translate or both.


  Mark Weiss 

In this workshop we will take advantage of separation from our usual cultural and linguistic worlds to focus on poetry as a way to explore, a process that may know its beginning but needs to discover its end, or a game that invents its rules in the act of playing. We’ll be looking at and experimenting with risk-taking, the unfamiliar, the word that surprises, losing our balance and finding a new one, presuming nothing in advance. To that end we’ll begin with some de-centering exercises and some issues of translation and difference and proceed to where the workshop takes us, mindful of music in all its forms and the literal world within and around us.


  Susan Rich:  Speaking Pictures: A Poetry Workshop

“Look at the subject, think about it before photographing, look until it becomes alive and looks back into you.”  —Edward Steichen

This will be a writing workshop focused on ekphrasis, poems written about visual art. Famous models of the form by such poets as Rilke, Robert Hayden, and Lisel Mueller will be examined as well as many contemporary examples. Participants will sharpen their powers of observation and try their hand at writing poems based on a vast array of visual pieces.


  Jonathan Harrington: