
Workshop with Forrest Gander, Merida, 2009
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.
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
Jonathan Harrington: