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PoetryPoetry: The Elements of CraftS10-P01
“Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story”: Reading and Writing Poems Based in MythologyS10-P02
The Prose Poem: The Cast Iron AeroplaneS10-P03
A Momentary Stay Against Confusion: A Poetry WorkshopS10-P04
The Poetry Publishing Fast TrackS10-P05
You are here > Home >Spring 2010 Seminars, Courses & Workshops > Poetry |
Monthly Story SlamTues., May 15, 7-8:30 p.m. Lunch Break Book TalksHosted by Steve Huff Book Discussions at Valley ManorMay 16, 1:30 – 3:00 p.m. The Culinary Reading and Discussion GroupHosted by Sandy Bosworth & Kathy Pottetti
Click here for more May Events...
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| Writers & Books, Rochester's community literary center, inspires and instructs over 25,000 people each year through a wide array of offerings in nearly every literary genre. Believing that the written and spoken word are central to our lives and culture, Writers & Books celebrates, promotes and works to make them available to all. Writers & Books is located at 740 University Avenue, near Atlantic Avenue in the Neighborhood of the Arts. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In order to write good poetry, one must first learn the basics of craft. In this workshop, we will explore the devices and vocabulary of poetry: we will look at words (their literal definitions and their connotations), their history and sounds (alliteration, onomatopoeia, assonance, internal rhyme etc.). We will explore imagery through metaphor, simile, personification, synesthesia, and synecdoche and more; look at metered and syllabic forms as well as free verse; explore different thoughts on line breaks, diction, allusions. We will talk about audience, purpose, and voice; read from the work of some notable notable poets as well as try various exercises on craft of our own; learn to add poetic vocabulary and poetic technique to our poetry tool kits in an effort to improve or writing skills and to use both familiar and unfamiliar techniques, forms, and ideas to help us see the world and our poetry in new ways. At times, we may share our own poetic experiences, preferences, philosophies, and writings in a safe, comfortable environment
Icarus and Daedalus, Zeus and Leda, Orpheus and Eurydice: These are just a few of the figures in classical mythology whose stories of escape, transformation, and desire have been interpreted by poets, and sometimes completely re-imagined. During this workshop, after we read and discuss selected classical myths and poems they inspired, you will have the opportunity to write your own myth-based poems. If you have a favorite myth or collection of mythology, feel free to bring it along.
Challenging traditional concepts of poetry and narrative prose, the prose poem is by nature “subversive.” It makes meaning where no form exists, and it does so in a few words; seems less art than an act of defiance. It isn’t so much crafted as it is spilled out, like a Jackson Pollock painting. Russell Edson, one of its main practitioners, variously defines it as “poetry freed from the definition of poetry, and a prose freed of the necessity of fiction...a cast iron aeroplane that can fly...a statement that seeks sanity while its author teeters on the edge of the abyss.” That being said, prose poems do have their own distinct form and follow a set of rules. We will study effective examples of prose poems, practice creating them using prompts, and critique them in class. We will also look at the burgeoning market for prose poems. 
In this Poetry Workshop and Readshop students will read a number of contemporary poems, work on writing and revising their own poetry, explore and discuss essays by renowned poets on the “what” and “how” of poetry, (image, metaphor, sound, rhythm) so that they might become more comfortable with the reading and writing of poetry. Play, the language and the imagination will be stressed. Students will be encouraged to be “creators” with language rather than “transcribers” so that their poems surprise and inform themselves as well as their readers. This class is geared to those who have not written much poetry, or are now eager to return to writing poetry after some time away from writing.
Want to learn how to publish your poetry in American journals as well as overseas? Gary Lehmann, who has published hundreds of poems in journals all over the world will teach this one-day seminar to tell you his secrets. Detailed information will explain how to organize your desk for quick submissions, how to find web lists that will tell you when editors are open to new submissions, and what exactly to send each editor.