Workshop Descriptions & Instructors

Daniel Khalastchi

Pack and Ship: A Poetry Workshop
Weekend Workshop June 16-17

Betting on the Muse: A Poetry Workshop
Weekend Workshop July 21-22

Out of Our Hands: An Advanced Poetry Workshop
One-Week Workshop July 22-27

Biography

Pack and Ship: A Poetry Workshop
Weekend Workshop June 16-17

One long and lonely winter, I bought myself a gym membership. I woke up mornings, read through breakfast, taught my classes, and in the evenings went to the gym and worked out on something called a “step-a-ciser.” It was a wonderful routine. I felt amazing—like a new electrically charged version of my normal self, and it was exhilarating. This exhilaration lasted a little over a week. Nine days, to be exact, and then I simply stopped going. I got busy, I got overworked, I just stopped trying to try. Although some of you may have had similar experiences with memberships/book clubs/weekly self-promises to attend the local farmers’ market, the fact of the matter is that sometimes it’s simply hard to keep encouraging ourselves. All this is to say that as poets, we attempt to go to the “word-gym” as often as we can, but sometimes we need a little push. In this workshop, we will “spot” each other as we prepare to do the most frightening thing of all: show off our new bodies to the world. During our time together, we will discuss revision options for your work, and also learn the ins and outs of how and where to submit these pieces for publication. We may not all be able to drag a semi across a church parking lot with our teeth by the end of the weekend, but we’ll certainly have the skills to remind ourselves that we know how to sweat when the time comes.

Betting on the Muse: A Poetry Workshop
Weekend Workshop July 21-22

I usually lose at poker. Part of this is because I’m no good with numbers. The other part is because it’s scary to take risks; it’s much easier to bet on a sure thing and dodge the patience it takes to sit and study the game. While gambling and poetry have their obvious differences, the same fears/reservations that might keep us away from casinos can limit us severely as writers. By worrying too much about readers, style, or if/how our poems reflect back on us as creators, we prevent ourselves from exploring all the avenues the blank page has to offer. In this workshop, we will expand our poetic abilities by (as Bukowski says) betting it all on the muse. Through close analysis of poems by James Wright, John Berryman, Gertrude Stein, and Emily Dickinson (among others), we will examine what it means to successfully take chances on the page (emotional, thematic, formal) and work on implementing those ideas in our own writing via in-class exercises and workshops. Poets at all levels who are interested in generating work that pushes them in new directions are encouraged to join us.

Out of Our Hands: An Advanced Poetry Workshop
One-Week Workshop July 22-27

As poets, we understand the world in lines and rhythms. We see form and the absence of form; we hear both music and thunderous silences. The problem isn’t howto keep our senses alert—it’s deciding what to do with what we’ve experienced, and how to share our art with a community outside of ourselves. The process of finding collaborators/readers can be challenging. In this course—which will include an intense drafting, polishing, workshopping, and submitting cycle—we will not only revise and reshape poems, but we will also discover how to get them out of our hands by submitting the pieces to a variety of literary journals. The goal of this class is not just to get published. Rather—through the introduction and analysis of national and local literary magazines, journals, writing groups, and readings—we will explore our vibrant poetry community in its reaches, and discover where our work might best fit in, how we might start our own public poetry projects, and how to bring our voices to a larger literary conversation.

Biography

Daniel Khalastchi’s poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in a variety of journals, including MAKE Magazine; 1913: A Journal of Forms; jubilat; Forklift, Ohio; Court Green; Columbia Poetry Review; Denver Quarterly; and iO: A Journal of New American Poetry. A graduate of The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he is the author of Manoleria (2011), winner of the Tupelo Press First Book Prize. Daniel is a co-founder/editor of Rescue Press, and he currently lives in Iowa City where he is the Assistant Director of The University of Iowa’s Undergraduate Certificate in Writing Program.

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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 February 24, 2012