This workshop is one every poet should take at some time in their live. Not
only is the area beautiful and the food great,all 3 of the teachers ,Dorianne
Laux , Ellen Bass and Joe Millar give the students some wonderful writing
prompts. All this with an ocean view,
WRITING AND KNOWING
6th Annual Poetry Workshop with
Ellen Bass, Dorianne Laux, and Joseph Millar
July 5-10, 2009
at Esalen, Big Sur, CA
What another would have done as well, do not do it.
What another would have said as well or written as well, do not say or write it.
Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself.
" Andre Gide
There
is a world inside each of us that we know better than anything else,
and a world outside of us that calls for our attention. Our subject
matter is always right with us. The trick is to find out what we know,
challenge what we know, own what we know, and then give it away in
language.
We
will write poems, share our writing, and hear what our work touches in
others. We'll also read model poems by contemporary poets and discuss
aspects of the craft. But mainly this will be a writing retreat-- time
to explore and create in a supportive community. Though the focus is on
poetry, prose writers who want to enrich their language will find it a
fertile environment.
There
is a vitality, a life-force, an energy-that is translated through you
into action. And because there is only one of you in all time, this
expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist- It is not
your business to determine how good it is-It is your business to keep
it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. --Martha Graham
The
focus of this workshop is on generating new poems. Dorianne, Joe and I
will each give a short talk on craft to help us extend our skills.
The topics this year will be:
TRUTH AND BEAUTY--Joseph Millar: For Keats's Urn,
these were one and the same. We will look at poems by various
contemporary masters with a view toward discovering whether one has
ascendancy over the other, and what the tensions between them might
mean to our own poetics (or general beliefs about writing).
THE PERSONAL UNIVERSE - Dorianne Laux:
What makes your voice your own? What makes it uniquely yours? How
does a poem create a feeling of intimacy with the reader? How can we
make our poems daring, distinctive, unmistakably ours? Using the poems
of Ruth Stone, a poet who is adept in all these matters, as examples,
we'll practice writing poems that discover and reflect our personal
universe.
THE LIST POEM--Ellen Bass: Lists
are irresistible. There were lists in the library of Alexandria and
they've continued from the Bible to Homer, from the Elizabethans to
Whitman, from Cole Porter to us. Writing a list poem can be a lot of
fun because once you've got your theme, you can just keep thinking up
more and more and more. We'll look at a few list poems from the past
and some contemporary catalogues, learning techniques to keep the
tension high and the poem alive.
Please join us if:
*You've hit a plateau in your writing and want to break through to the next level.
*You're just beginning and want to get started with supportive teachers.
*You're an experienced writer and just want a chance to learn more from the best.
*You're in a dry spell, due to lack of inspiration or time.
*You love to write and want a gorgeous, inspiring retreat.
Although the emphasis is on poetry, this workshop is open to prose writers too. Rich,
textured, evocative language is the province of all writers, so this
workshop will be applicable to writers of fiction and memoir as well.
Lastly,
there's Esalen itself. If you've been to Esalen before, you already
know it's one of the most magnificent places on the planet. If you
haven't, don't postpone it. It's breathtakingly beautiful and deeply
nourishing. We'll be having our group meetings in the Big House
overlooking the Pacific. We'll also be breaking into smaller groups for
individual attention. Participants will have an opportunity to work
with all three teachers.
ELLEN BASS's most recent book of poems, The Human Line, was published by Copper Canyon Press in June 2007. She co-edited (with Florence Howe) the groundbreaking No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women (Doubleday, 1973), has published several volumes of poetry, including Mules of Love (BOA, 2002) which won the Lambda Literary Award. Her poems have appeared in many magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, The Progressive, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, and The Sun.
She was awarded the Elliston Book Award for Poetry from the University
of Cincinnati, Nimrod/Hardman's Pablo Neruda Prize, The Missouri
Review's Larry Levis Award, the Greensboro Poetry Prize, the New
Letters Poetry Prize, the Chautauqua Poetry Prize, two Pushcart Prizes,
and a Fellowship from the California Arts Council. She is also
co-author of Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth (HarperCollins 1996) and The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (Harper
Collins 1988, 1994), which has sold over a million copies and has been
translated into ten languages. She teaches in many beautiful locations
and at Pacific University's MFA Program in Oregon.
DORIANNE LAUX's fourth book of poems, Facts about the Moon (W.W.
Norton), is the recipient of the Oregon Book Award. It was also
short-listed for the 2006 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for the most
outstanding book of poems published in the United States in the
previous year, and chosen by the Kansas City Star as one of the ten
best books of poetry published in 2005. Laux is author of three
collections of poetry from BOA Editions, Awake (1990) introduced by Philip Levine, to be reprinted this year by Eastern Washington University Press, What We Carry (1994), finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Smoke, (2000). She is co-author of The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (W.W. Norton, 1997). Her work has appeared in the Best of the American Poetry Review, The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and has been twice included in Best American Poetry. She
has been awarded with a Pushcart Prize, two fellowships from The
National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She
waited tables and wrote poems in San Diego, L.A., Berkeley, Petaluma
and Juneau, Alaska before moving to Eugene where she taught Creative
Writing at the University of Oregon. She now teaches at Pacific
University and at North Carolina State University in Raleigh where she
lives with her husband, poet Joseph Millar.
JOSEPH MILLAR is the author of Fortune,
from Eastern Washington University Press. Pulitzer Prize winner Yusef
Komunyakaa says "There's a tenderness at the core of Fortune, where
the commonplace becomes atypical and fantastical, and each poem
possesses a voice that summons and reveals. Joseph Millar is a poet we
can believe." Millar grew up in Pennsylvania, attended Johns Hopkins
University and spent 25 years in the San Francisco Bay area, working at
a variety of jobs, from telephone repairman to commercial fisherman.
His first collection, Overtime (2001) was finalist for the Oregon Book Award and his poems have appeared in numerous magazines including TriQuarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, DoubleTake, Ploughshares, New Letters, Manoa, and River Styx. He
has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in Poetry,
the Moncalvo Center for the Arts and from Oregon Literary Arts. Millar
teaches at Pacific University's Low Residency MFA Program.
