WRITING & FAILURE: ON DISAPPOINTMENTS, SHAME, BEING LOST, AND MIRACLES

In this workshop we will ruin everything.  We will fall down the well, eat the poisonous berries, and take unforgivable risks.  We will say things we never meant to say, destroy the livingroom, write the worst thing, break all the glass, and then pray for a miracle.  

This workshop is a multi-genre workshop.  All forms are welcome (poetry, prose, hybrid, memoir, essay, flash, and fragment).  

reading list

Mary Ruefle's MY PRIVATE PROPERTY, Robin Coste Lewis's VOYAGE OF THE SABLE VENUS AND OTHER POEMS, CA Conrad's ECODEVIANCE (SOMA)TICS FOR THE FUTURE WILDERNESS, Samuel Beckett's MOLLOY, and Rachel Zucker's MUSEUM OF ACCIDENTS

. . .

A DAILY JOURNALING WORKSHOP

In this 5 week workshop we will keep (and share) a daily journal.  We will study the composition of the entry and its worth, the strangeness and beauty of raw material, and the relationship between confession and invention.

reading list

Franz Kafka: The Blue Octavo Notebooks / Kate Zambreno: Drifts / Jenny Erpenbeck: Not a Novel / A Memoir in Pieces / Carmen Gimenez Smith: Bring Down the Little Birds

. . .

SPILL YOUR GUTS

The poet’s job, isn’t it, is to spill her guts and arrange these guts into a revolution named Poem. In this workshop, we will look at the confessional poem as a means of protest, a desire for change, repair, and a study of the cracks where the light and dust shine through. How does the smallest cry become radical? How can a fever inspire change? How can a tiny folded up poem move a country to tears? How can your most secret voice be turned into a form of resistance?

. . .

BUILDING NEW WORLDS OUT OF OLD WORLDS

“The future has an ancient heart.” — Carlos Levi

In this workshop we will build new worlds using materials as old and familiar as myth, law, weather, language, and hope.  Stone by stone, word by word, we will design new worlds to live inside while paying homage to the world(s) that once kept us.     

reading list

Leonora Carrington: The Hearing Trumpet / Edward Carey: The Swallowed Man / Richard McGuire: Here / Angela Carter: The Bloody Chamber / Italo Calvino: Invisible Cities

. . .

WRITING INTO THE SILENCES

In this workshop we will write into those places where we have always gone mute, or muffled, or still. We will find language for those feral places, those places that have only known howl or holler or sob. We will lift the hand off the mouth and collect the stories and poetry that are dying to come through.

reading list

Bhanu Kapil’s HUMANIMAL: A PROJECT FOR FUTURE CHILDREN / LUCIE BROCK-BROIDO’s THE MASTER LETTERS / Emily Dickinson’s THE MASTER LETTERS / Inger Christensen’s ALPHABET / and Maggie Nelson’s BLUETS

. . .

OBSESSION

In this five week workshop you will write the living daylights out of that thing that writes the living daylights out of you. What, like a fixed star, is at the center of your heart? What is your hobbyhorse, your idee fixe, your charge?  What hangs you up and infatuates? Writing and reading assignments will guide you into your obsession so that you become more fluent in the parts of its landscape that mystify you. Bring your shovels. We’re going to go deep.

reading list

WHEREAS by Layli Long Soldier / MOTHERs by Rachel Zucker / WHAT ANIMAL by Oni Buchanan / NO PLANETS STRIKE by Josh Bell / and WAITING FOR GODOT by Samuel Beckett.

. . .

FAMILY & FAIRYTALE

In this 5 week workshop we will excavate the fairytale, extract its minerals and bones, and use these resources to write about family.  This workshop is a multi-genre workshop.  All forms are welcome (poetry, prose, hybrid, memoir, essay, flash, and fragment).  

reading list

THE CLASSIC FAIRY TALES (edited by Maria Tatar) & MY MOTHER SHE KILLED ME, MY FATHER HE ATE ME: FORTY NEW FAIRYTALES (edited by Kate Bernheimer)

. . .

One Day Poetry Workshop

Poetry is a high form of alchemy, a magical process of transformation, creation and combination. A base metal utterance can be converted into a golden howl. A yawn can become a necessary prayer. During our hours together, we will dangerously play with form. We will mix the milk with the poison. The mother tongue with the wilderness. The stars with the stones. Hopefully there will be accidents. Hopefully there will be explosions. The goal of this workshop is that each participant makes one beautiful monster poem that will save us all.

. . .

A JOURNALING WORKSHOP

In this 5 week workshop we will keep (and share) a daily journal.  We will study the composition of the entry and its worth, the strangeness and beauty of raw material, and the relationship between confession and invention.  To keep us company:

READING LIST

Carmen Gimenez Smith's BRING DOWN THE LITTLE BIRDS / Lynda Barry's SYLLABUS / Robert Wasler's A SCHOOLBOY'S DIARY / Wayne Koestenbaum's THE PINK TRANCE NOTEBOOKS / and Roland Barthes' MOURNING DIARY

Note: entries can be dreams, grocery lists, notes towards a novel, letters to nobody, a list of current events, sobbings, pieces of poems, fictions or chicken scratch.  Which is to say, this workshop is (as always) a multi-genre workshop.  All forms are welcome (poetry, prose, hybrid, memoir, essay, flash, fragment, and everything in between).

A JOURNALING WORKSHOP

In this 5 week workshop we will keep (and share) a daily journal.  We will study the composition of the entry and its worth, the strangeness and beauty of raw material, and the relationship between confession and invention. 

reading list

To keep us company we will read Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, Bernadette Mayer's Midwinter Day, and The Diaries of Franz Kafka. 

Note: entries can be fiction, dream, grocery lists, notes towards a novel, letters to nobody, a list of current events, sobbings, pieces of poems, or chicken scratch.  Which is to say, this workshop is (as always) a multi-genre workshop.  All forms are welcome (poetry, prose, hybrid, memoir, essay, flash, fragment, and everything in between).

WRITING THE MOTHER

In this 5-week workshop we will write the MOTHER. What is the relationship between mother and monster and mother and mouth and mother and mutter and mother and more and mother and moth?  Is Mother a language we speak?  Is Mother a place on all the maps inside us?  Is Mother the indecipherable text?  Or a rosetta stone?  Or everything?  Or nowhere?  Or all the questions lined up on a table like bones?

reading list

THE STRANGER by Albert Camus / THE BOOK OF MUTTER by Kate Zambrano / SARAH – OF FRAGMENTS and LINES by Julie Carr / BELOVED by Toni Morrison / and THE COLLECTED STORIES OF LYDIA DAVIS by Lydia Davis