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Workshop Descriptions & Instructors
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Katie Ford The Art of Emotion: Poetry Subject Matters: Advanced Poetry The Shape of Your Poem The Art of Emotion: Poetry There is a craft to emotion. It might sound cold, it might sound calculated, but it’s a writerly fact: language brings us into a place of heightened emotion because a subject that began in the guts of the writer has been rigorously shaped upon the page. How? This weekend course will look at the techniques—linguistic, imagistic, musical, intellectual—that conjure emotion both in subtle and jolting ways. We will discuss emotion as I believe it ought to be discussed—as an element of craft. It’s not an accident, nor is it a gushing forth of language. The weekend will start with a quick tour of theories of emotion, and then we will look at masterful examples of poems that yield emotions of all kinds—joy, confusion, sadness, and simple happiness. How was this done? we’ll ask. We will then practice what we find by doing poetry exercises, all with an eye toward emotional dips, lifts, whimsies and bombs. You will be asked to bring your own work not for peer critique but for development and revision. All skill levels are welcome. Subject Matters: Advanced Poetry 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. The Shape of Your Poem Do the terms “dropped line” and “organic form” intrigue or disturb you? Do you like the idea of stealing from traditional forms without obeying all of their rules? Do you like to write long, winding lines, or experiment with fragments scattered across a page? 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 writing exercises, and share our work out loud. Writers of all levels are welcome. Biography
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by Instructor Sponsored by the Division of Continuing Education Last updated on February 10, 2009 |
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