At Melanie’s beautiful talk last night.
The Free School for Writing is a series of free craft talks and workshops conceived as a modular, collapsible, itinerant classroom. Writers are invited to give craft talks or classes in other formats in exchange for a forum for investigating any writing or literary idea, topic, or inquiry they are especially passionate about with a group of engaged listeners and participants. The series focuses on fiction and poetry, but can also address other forms of writing and book arts. The project’s name alludes to a tradition of anarchistic, democratic, and DIY free schools based on gift economy principles. Classes are free and anyone is welcome to attend, including parents bringing babies or young children.
The Free School for Writing is a project of Denise Delgado.
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But largely, c’mon — you and I both know — real live American poetry is absent from our public schools. The teaching of poetry languishes, and that region of youthful neurological terrain capable of being ignited and aria’d only by poetry is largely dark, unpopulated, and silent, like a classroom whose door is unopened, whose shades are drawn.
This is more than a shame, for poetry is our common treasure-house, and we need its aliveness, its respect for the subconscious, its willingness to entertain ambiguity; we need its plaintive truth-telling about the human condition and its imaginative exhibitions of linguistic freedom, which confront the general culture’s more grotesque manipulations. We need the emotional training sessions poetry conducts us through. We need its previews of coming attractions: heartbreak, survival, failure, endurance, understanding, more heartbreak.
"[Suggestion] | Twenty Little Poems That Could Save America, by Tony Hoagland | Harper’s Magazine
This essay seems worth sharing here.
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The Poet as Bricoleur in the Era of Trash and Graphomania | Melanie Almeder
O, Miami Edition
6pm Wednesday, April 24
The Betsy-South Beach, 1440 Ocean Drive, Miami Beach, FL 33139
The class will open with a brief outline of the history of the “found poem,” and the possibilities it has created for poets. We will look at models of found poems to consider the decontextualization of language, the foreclosure of irony, and, finally, what it means to be a poet/bricoleur in this era.
Melanie Almeder studied literature, creative writing, and art history at the University of Virginia. She received an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Massachusetts, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in contemporary novel and narrative theory from the University of Florida. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry, Five Points, the Georgia Review, Seneca Review, and Cortland Review, among others. She lives in Roanoke, Virginia, and teaches English and creative writing at Roanoke College. Her first collection of poetry, On Dream Street, won the Editors’ Prize at Tupelo Press, and was a finalist for the Walt Whitman Award. Her poetry has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. In 2011, she was given an Outstanding Faculty Award by the State Council of Higher Education and Dominion Resources. -
It’s back!
The Free School for Writing and I took a break. I had a baby, etc. But we’re re-starting with a special edition of the Free School during the O, Miami poetry festival. Stay tuned for details!
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Monday's handout is up! →
Reading for Dennis Hinrichsen’s craft talk on the poetic line.
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Energy and Vision in the Poetic Line | Dennis Hinrichsen
The Free School for Writing (O, MIAMI edition)
with University of Wynwood + Florida Center for the Literary Arts
7:30pm, Monday, April 11
at Bas Fisher Invitational / 180 NE 39th Street, suite 210 / Miami, FL 33137Energy and Vision in the Poetic Line
with Dennis HinrichsenWhat distinguishes poetry, obviously, from prose is the poetic line. The questions are how to use the line effectively on the horizontal to engage the reader with music and vision, and then how to carry the reader via the line break down the page to drive the poem forward to its inevitable close. This talk will look at a variety of ways of accomplishing this with examples from Keats, Shakespeare, Dickinson, Frost, William Carlos Williams, Hank Williams, Sharon Olds, Philip Levine and others. A packet will be provided.
Dennis Hinrichsen’s full-length collections of poetry include Kurosawa’s Dog (2008 FIELD Poetry Prize), Cage of Water, Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights (1999 Akron Poetry Prize), The Rain that Falls This Far, and The Attraction of Heavenly Bodies. He has also published a chapbook, Message to Be Spoken into the Left Ear of God. His awards include an NEA grant, two grants from the State of Michigan, as well as awards from Poetry Northwest and Carolina Quarterly. He currently teaches at Lansing Community College.
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A Speculative Geometry of Lyricism | Pete Borrebach
Monday, March 14, 7pm:
at the end/spring break @ Bas Fisher InvitationalA Speculative Geometry of Lyricism
This craft talk, led by local poet-at-large Peter Borrebach, will seek to create a useful and thoroughly modern visuo-geometric analogy for the lyrical process, to not only look into what is going on when writers and readers have lyrical experiences, but also to give ourselves, as lyrical poem-creators, new insight into our own methodologies. The talk will be highly interactive, involving several writing exercises, lively discussions, recursive equations, and fractal dimensions (please bring a pen and paper). A reading packet is available for download at: http://www.box.net/shared/v4l3gzrfci. Attendees are kindly asked to read these poems in advance of the talk.
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The Material Layer: Reading for Loaded Objects | Denise Delgado
The Material Layer: Reading for Loaded Objects
with Denise Delgado6/29, 7:15-8:30p
the end @ artseen
2210 NW 1 Place (in Wynwood).
http://bit.ly/cEuPopI’ve come to think of material objects in fiction as physical things that exist in the world of a story, external to the consciousness of the characters (i.e., not a noun that refers to an object but doesn’t materialize in the story, as in metaphor). These objects work together to compose a “material layer” that can evoke sensory and other associations within the text and in the reader. Writers can use materiality to structure their stories, reveal character, build setting, develop theme.
Some objects are so powerful that they do many things at once to a story. We might call these loaded objects. We could also think of them as charged objects, on-duty objects; but for me they are loaded with possibility, loaded with associations. Our discussion will focus less on what an object means, instead asking: what does it do?
We’ll look at artist William Kentridge’s short video “Tide Table” to consider loaded objects in a visual narrative. We’ll also discuss Mercè Rodoreda’s “That Wall, That Mimosa.” Try to read it before class; it’s short and you can find it here: http://tiny.cc/2unde. We may also look at Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle or passages from Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau. Handouts will be provided.
REQUIRED READING:
Mercè Rodoreda, “That Wall, That Mimosa” (from My Christina & Other Stories)
SUGGESTED READING:
Patrick Chamoiseau, Texaco
Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle -
Trailer for Reading for Loaded Objects
Theme: Linear by Peter Vidani
