CLASS SCHEDULE & SELECTiONS NOW OPEN
FRiDAY MASTER CLASSES
Beasley – Dreams and the Work of Poetry (Friday 11am-2pm)
“The dream thinks like a poet” – Bert O. States If our dreams think like our poems, then every night gives us each two hours of rough drafts for poems,…
Eady – What the Poem Wants (Friday 2:30-5:30pm)
What does the poem want? This is a different question than “what does the POET want?” It’s not always the same answer. It’s a question that I’ll ask and explore…
Session 1 | Saturday 9-10:15am
Cavazos – Off the Page, Onto the Stage: The Art of Performance
Does approaching the mic make your knees wobble? Are audience members scrolling their phones while you read? In this workshop participants will learn the art of reading a poem aloud.…
Denner – Meditation and the Art of Poetry
Art is meditation, meditation is art. Can mindfulness meditation be useful in the creation of poetry? As a Buddhist lama in the Dzogchen tradition, I have developed a poetics based…
Patterson – Poetry & the Feminine Divine
The Shekhinah. Lady Wisdom. God the Mother. Many religious traditions are patriarchal and worship mainly a male deity, but traditions of the feminine divine persist, sometimes hidden, obscured. In this…
Sampsell – The Merging of Collage and Poetry
The connection between the construction of a paper collage and the writing of a poem will be discussed. Special attention will be paid to how visual creations and pieces of…
Sheffield – Picking out the Pepper with Smaller Screwdrivers
Billy Collins says it’s working with smaller and smaller screwdrivers. I like that, but what feels even more true to my experience is what Robert Wrigley says: “It’s time to…
Welch – Haiku Targets
An overview of haiku fundamentals, and their misunderstandings, and how a literary understanding of haiku and its aesthetics can benefit the writing of any kind of poetry or fiction. Many…
Session 2 | Saturday 10:45am-12pm
Bradfield – Exploring Erasure & Found Poems
What makes a “good” or “real” erasure or found poem? In this workshop, we’ll examine works by Mary Rufle, Layli Longsoldier, Nick Flynn, and Muriel Rukeyser, and more to consider…
Fuhrman – The Genuine Article: Exploring Ambiguity in A/An/The
Embark on a captivating journey into the world of articles and poetry, where every word carries significance and every choice shapes meaning. In this engaging session, we will delve into…
True – Start with a Question Mark: Learning to be Curious
In this session, we’ll be cultivating our sense of curiosity and practicing the skill of inquiry. We’ll look at published pieces to start, then turn an eye to our own…
Vijarro – Sticky Note to the Self
An exploration through open dialogue of one’s true heart calling to action by means of the “Inner Eye” expressed through poetry and art. Walk with me as we call to…
Welch – Our Endless and Proper Work: Learning Attention from Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver’s “Instructions for living a life” were to pay attention, be astonished, and tell about it. This inspirational talk for writers of all experience levels covers her key poems…
Whitcomb – Manuscript Architecture: A-Frame, Pile, Geodesic Dome, Space Station
How do you build your poetry manuscript? What are some girders and guides to see your way to a cohesive vision for your book? I will discuss how my three…
Session 3 | Saturday 4-5:15pm
Beasley – Not of Ideas, but of Words
Stephan Mallarme famously told Degas “Poems are made not of ideas, but of words.” In this class we will begin with vocabulary—a pile of 80 words– and celebrate their sonic…
Jones – Looking for Dragon Smoke: Writing from the Shadow
All the difficult things in life, from our rational and irrational fears to our negative reactions to situations and people, often make for the best fodder for our writing. This…
Keith – Ekphrasis and Epistolary
Images conjure memories and emotions, but who do you tell? How do you frame the moment, the conversation between a piece of art and an unknown person? Recreating a gallery…
Krow & Vaux – Get Sh!t Done!: Developing a Writing Community That Keeps You Accountable
Drawing on the experience of developing a writing collective in Spokane called “Get Sh!t Done,” we will describe how to evaluate your writing goals and find/recruit like-minded artists to help…
Sampsell – The Surprising Poetry of Lists
Writing a list is easy and useful. It’s something most people do every day. Especially helpful for writers who feel stuck or blocked, a list can be a non-intimidating entryway…
Sheffield – Writing a Being-Centric Poem with Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry
In his classic book about making poems, The Triggering Town, Richard Hugo advises poets to “write off the subject” because the longer most of us talk about something, the duller…
Session 4 | Sunday 9:45-11am
Bradfield – “Othering” the Nature Poem
How might class, race, gender, and sexuality infuse our “nature writing?” We will look at “socialized nature poems” that allow identity to hold space with biological and cultural accuracy. We…
Denner – Reflections of a Beatnik
Are the Beat writers still relevant? In 1965, I attended the Berkeley Poetry Conference, what John Bennett calls “an event creating white light intensity that rivaled any drug high and…
Eady – THE RE-WRITE (or THE REWRITE?): How and Why We Tinker While We Write
In which I will show you the steps I took to change a stanza poem to a prose poem and why I did esp. when I was highly wary of…
Krow & Vaux – The Locally Perverse: Writing “Weird” Regionalism in Micro Fiction & Poetry
Everyone has some place they want to write about. But how to approach place-based writing without falling into the traps of preciousness, folksiness, or disgust that so often characterizes regional…
Patterson – Irreverent Bardolatry: Reimagining Shakespeare
Reimagining and writing into canonical texts can be a powerful way to interrupt and destabilize literary icons, such as Shakespeare. In this generative workshop, we’ll embrace a revisionist stance as…
Welch – Haiku on Steroids
An advanced generative workshop that explores rule-breaking, taboo topics, and other creative and energizing approaches to writing and appreciating haiku. What did Bashō mean by “Learn the rules and then…
Session 5 | Sunday 1-2:15pm
Cavazos – Radical Revision: Release the Energy
What do you do with a poem that lies lifeless on the page, clearly in need of resuscitation? In this workshop participants will learn to identify the energy in a…
Fuhrman – Prosody of Place: Poetry’s Wild Sounds
This generative class invites you to explore the captivating intersection of language, nature, and poetic expression. Tune your senses to the melodies of the world, crafting vibrant, evocative poetry that…
Jones – Yin and Yang: Using Contrast to Bring Forth a Poem’s Wholeness
In Taoism, the concept of Yin and Yang captures the inherent tension in all things: light and darkness, masculine and feminine, happiness and sorrow, and so on and so forth.…
Keith – RENGA: An After Party
This workshop is an event. You will come with a haiku. Your poem may be selected as the opening verse. Together we will have a renga party by following the…
Vijarro – Dancing with Creation
With India ink, watercolors, pen, pencil, and Calligraphy paint brushes, we will create new meaning with poems, lines, words, as we play with the written form of expression and the…
Whitcomb – Tell It Slant: (Under)Lying/Truth in Your Writing
How important is the « truth »? In this generative presentation we will look at the power of figurative language, the poet’s relationship to the poem’s speaker, and your allegiances…
