Iowa Summer Writing Festival


Previous Page \| Registration Form \| Site Map \| Next Page
Workshop Descriptions & Instructors Faith Adiele Mary Allen Kate Aspengren Thomas Fox Averill Nancy Barry Timothy Bascom Linda Bendorf Venise Berry Bruce Bond Michael Dennis Browne Susan Taylor Chehak John Dalton Thomas K. Dean Amber Dermont Kelly Dwyer Hope Edelman Josh Emmons Katie Ford Patricia Foster Laura Fraser Cecile Goding Douglas Goetsch Kevin González John Griesemer Sands Hall Christine Hemp Jim Heynen Rick Hillis Charles Holdefer Richard Jackson Cheryl Fusco Johnson Wayne Johnson Bret Anthony Johnston Daniel Khalastchi Zachary Lazar Carolyn Lieberg BK Loren Fritz Mc Donald James McKean Gordon Mennenga Katherine Min Sharelle Byars Moranville Michael Morse Barbara Robinette Moss Marc Nieson Shannon Olson Lon Otto Juliet Patterson Anjali Sachdeva Sarah Saffian Sam Samuels Leslie Schwartz Sandra Scofield Mary Kay Shanley Carol Spindel Karen Subach Mary Vermillion Ashley Warlick Jan Weissmiller Bart Yates	Katie Ford The Shape Of Your Poem Weekend Workshop July 12–13 “Subject Matters”: Advanced Poetry One-Week Workshop July 13–18 Finishing: Advanced Poetry Workshop Weekend Workshop July 19–20 Biography The Shape Of Your Poem Weekend Workshop July 12–13 Do the terms “dropped line,” “organic form,” or “refrain” bring light to your eyes? Do you like the idea of stealing what traditional forms have to offer without obeying all of their rules? Do you like to write long, winding lines, or experiment with fragments scattered across a page? If so, this is a goodcourse for you. In this weekend workshop, we’ll learn how the physical shape of your poem can organize, emote, dishevel and please. Looking at a wide array of published poems, we’ll explore how to shape our poems in ways that can open our imaginations and lead us more deeply into a poem’s subject. This is not a class on how to write in traditional form. Instead, it is concerned with the physicality of words on a page and how a poem’s subject and form can come into dynamic relationship. This is not a workshop. We will read poems, do exercises, and share our work out loud. All levels are welcome. “Subject Matters”: Advanced Poetry One-Week Workshop July 13–18 Historically, the poem has taken up many tasks. It’s been political, elegiac, comforting, and meditative. It’s sounded warnings and wooed the beloved. It’s been a historical witness and a cultural voyeur. It’s been a vessel of memory and a nervous ship that can’t see what’s ahead. It’s spoken of animals and plants, humans and galaxies, valentines and cuisines. In this class, we will discuss a poetic subject each day, focusing on the love poem, the elegy, the political poem, the philosophical poem, and poems about animals. A rich selection of published poems will be our guide, and we’ll do exercises in class and draft “subjected” poems each night according to our theme. This course will have no workshopping in it. However, it is an advanced class, and assumes that each participant has read and written poetry for at least three years. Finishing: Advanced Poetry Workshop Weekend Workshop July 19–20 This workshop will be devoted to studying and refining your poems with masterful contemporary poems as our guides. Revision will be conducted with an eye to the figuration, music, thinking, emotion, and form of each poem. A packet of published work will be distributed and referred to as we work through how participants’ poems can be enriched and “finished,” although it is said that no poem is ever finished, it’s just abandoned. Each participant will have one poem workshopped, and we will have short writing sessions in between so that participants can think about how each workshop session can be applied to their own poetry. A short discussion of how to submit poems for publication will be included, but the heart of the weekend will be your poems. Biography Katie Ford (M.F.A., The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop) is the author of Deposition and Colosseum (Graywolf, 2002 & 2008) and a chapbook, Storm (Marick, 2007). Individual poems have appeared in the The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares and Poets & Writers. She has received awards and grants from the Academy of American Poets and the Pen American Center. She teaches at Franklin & Marshall College and lives in Philadelphia with her husband, the novelist Josh Emmons. Their dachshund, Bill, fits in a Festival bag.

	Site Map \| Welcome \| Workshops by Session Date \| Workshops by Instructor Workshops by Genre \| Registration & Housing Information \| Registration Form Sponsored by the Division of Continuing Education Iowa Summer Writing Festival C215 Seashore Hall The University of Iowa Iowa City, IA 52242 Phone 319-335-4160 FAX 319-335-4743 iswfestival@uiowa.edu Last updated on January 10, 2008