March 31 10:00 – 5:00
” Try to love the questions themselves.” – Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Stock cinematic visions of the creative process suggest inspiration seizes us in sudden gusts or that it’s a lucky endowment. But what if inspiration, as the painter Agnes Martin suggests, is always there, and our access to it is a function of our receptivity? What about those poems we step over on our way to some idealized notion of The Poem? How can we be, as Stanley Kunitz puts it, “a friendly host?”
Do poems begin in conversation? In close observation? In empathy? In what we try to avoid? What allows us to “finish” a poem?
The day includes craft discussion, generative exercises, & workshop.
Please bring a 1-2 page piece for a 15-minute workshop session. Note: you’re welcome to use your session as an open conversation about a process issue/obstacle/preoccupation/joy, etc., rather than for discussion of a specific piece.
FEES:
Workshop only: $110
Workshop + 1-hour individual writing conference: $140 (session to be scheduled later)
Register by March 10 and save $10
Note: To ensure ample time for each person’s work, registration is limited to 12
Please email me below for information about how to register: (Payment by check, cash, or Paypal is available)
Held at the SFZC Conference Center 308 Page Street
We’ll break for lunch from 1:00 – 2:00. There are several cafes within a few blocks. Or bring your own lunch and stay at the center, where there is a lovely courtyard!
Two work exchange slots are available. Please email me below for more information. (six hours work exchange)