Keynote Speaker ~ Timothy Steele

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Keynote Speaker ~ Timothy Steele Timothy Steele is the author of four collections of poems: Uncertainties and Rest (1979), Sapphics against Anger and Other Poems (1986), The Color Wheel (1994), and

1 Keynote Speaker ~ Timothy Steele Timothy Steele is the author of four collections of poems: Uncertainties and Rest (1979), Sapphics against Anger and Other Poems (1986), The Color Wheel (1994), and Toward the Winter Solstice (2006). The first two were reprinted in 1995 as a joint volume, Sapphics and Uncertainties: Poems He has also published two books of scholarship and literary criticism, Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt against Meter (1990) and All the Fun s in How You Say a Thing: An Explanation of Meter and Versification (1999); and he has edited The Poems of J.V. Cunningham (1997). Steele s honors include a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing from Stanford University, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Peter I. B. Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Los Angeles PEN Center s Literary Award for Poetry, a California Arts Council Grant, a Commonwealth Club Medal for Poetry, and the Robert Fitzgerald Award for Excellence in the Study of Prosody. Born in Burlington, Vermont, in 1948, he has lived in Los Angeles since He is an emeritus professor of English at California State University, Los Angeles, where he taught from 1987 to 2012.

But how do we know when to set poems free--from plans, preconceptions, or meter--and when to explore the very different freedoms that fixed forms provide?

2 3-Day Workshop with Jane Satterfield and Ned Balbo ~ Finding Your Form What is poetic form, and how do we arrive at the forms we choose? We may select from the shelf of existing forms--sonnet, sestina, villanelle, et al.--or invent our own. But how do we know when to set poems free--from plans, preconceptions, or meter--and when to explore the very different freedoms that fixed forms provide? When we start out a draft in free verse or meter, is there a way to tell if it is time to change direction? How do we match the experience we wish to convey with the form that conveys it best? Prior to arriving on campus, poets enrolled in the workshop will 3-5 pages of poetry (free verse or formal--all types are welcome) in PDF form to ncb@verizon.net. From these Jane and Ned will select one poem from each participant for workshop discussion; you will receive feedback on the rest in a conference with Ned or Jane. In addition to your own poems, a short selection of poems to facilitate discussion and provide useful models will be provided.

3-Day Workskhop with Tony Barnstone ~ Experimental Variation on Syllabics For this workshop in which we workshop participant s syllabic poems, discuss converting free verse and formal poems to

3 3-Day Workskhop with Tony Barnstone ~ Experimental Variation on Syllabics For this workshop in which we workshop participant s syllabic poems, discuss converting free verse and formal poems to syllabics, and introduce hybrid forms, such as rhyming syllabics or syllabic versions of set forms such as the sonnet or ghazal, each participant will have minutes per poem. We will also (time allowing) work with some active writing, writing exercises, and new techniques.

3-Day Workshop with Dick Davis ~ Blank Verse Blank verse is the only form in English poetry whose origins we can pinpoint exactly; we know who invented it (Surrey), and why (to translate two books of

4 3-Day Workshop with Dick Davis ~ Blank Verse Blank verse is the only form in English poetry whose origins we can pinpoint exactly; we know who invented it (Surrey), and why (to translate two books of the Aeneid), and when (in the 1540s). Since its appearance it has been one of the two primary narrative verse forms in English (the other is the heroic couplet), and most of the greatest poets in English since the time of Surrey have written extensively in it. Despite the simplicity of its requirements, it has proved to be one of the most varied and various forms in English, and has been adapted to an enormous range of subjects and tones. It can be a bludgeon, or it can be perhaps the most hyper-subtle of all English verse forms in its effects; we shall examine how poets have achieved these effects and why they have wanted to do so.

3-Day Workshop with Annie Finch ~ Metrical Literacy This workshop will introduce the concept of the "metrical compass," a cycle of poetic meters with different strengths and capacities.

5 3-Day Workshop with Annie Finch ~ Metrical Literacy This workshop will introduce the concept of the "metrical compass," a cycle of poetic meters with different strengths and capacities. Using hands-on writing exercises, close reading, discussion, and workshop of your existing poems, we will explore the territory beyond the borders of iambic pentameter and discover the potential of various meters to express different aspects of ourselves. The workshop will be equally valuable for raw metrical beginners and experienced metrical poets.

6 3-Day Workshop with Juliana Gray and George Green ~ Reel Verse: Ekphrastic poems w/ Spotlight On Movies Most poets like to talk about movies and some like to write about them, too. We will discuss the principle problem that all ekphrastic poems share: will the poem engage the reader who hasn't seen the film or work of art? Can the poem delight a reader who may not like its subject? Can it stand alone as an autonomous work? The workshop will stare at various visual inspirations and listen to audio ones. All poets with an interest in ekphrasis are welcome.

7 3-Day Workshop with Amy Lemmon ~ Your Brain on Poetry: A Generative Workshop Need to jump-start your poetic practice? In this workshop, participants will be given exercises and strategies for breaking through blocks and stimulating creative thought processes. You ll see how current research in neuroscience and creativity studies applies to poetry. Activities--individual and collaborative--will expand your imaginative toolkit. You'll write new poems, share them with others in a supportive environment, and leave with a renewed sense of your own creativity. Amy Lemmon writer, parent, educator

3-Day Workshop with Shirley Lim ~ Working with Projective Verse: Out of the Comfort Zone Beginning with (your) poems in received closed form, the one-day workshop will reconsider these texts in light

8 3-Day Workshop with Shirley Lim ~ Working with Projective Verse: Out of the Comfort Zone Beginning with (your) poems in received closed form, the one-day workshop will reconsider these texts in light of the (almost infinite) possibilities to open their lines so as to release their breath, making emphatic the musical phrase on the field of the page. The workshop will be chiefly a process-driven deep reset of our poetic form practices to see what happens when we formalists play with a broader paradigm for form, ceding control of the poem s kinetic power elsewhere.

3-Day Workshop with Tim Liu ~ To Break or Not to Break If you're not writing in iambic pentameter, and if you want to go beyond "going by feel," what are some useful considerations when breaking (or

9 3-Day Workshop with Tim Liu ~ To Break or Not to Break If you're not writing in iambic pentameter, and if you want to go beyond "going by feel," what are some useful considerations when breaking (or not breaking) the lines of your poems? In this workshop, we will look at examples by, among others, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Charles Wright, Louise Gluck and Lyn Hejinian. Free Verse; Syllabics; Prose Poems; just a few of my favorite things.

3-Day Workshop with Chelsea Rathburn ~ From Seed to Sequence By giving poets the space to consider a subject from many angles, the sequence allows them to tackle complex or difficult material, both

10 3-Day Workshop with Chelsea Rathburn ~ From Seed to Sequence By giving poets the space to consider a subject from many angles, the sequence allows them to tackle complex or difficult material, both personal and political. This poetry workshop will explore the poetic sequence as a mode of formal experimentation. In our discussions, we will consider sequences composed in a single form, such as the sonnet crown, as well as sequences that employ different forms, voices, and narrative strategies. Participants are invited to bring a short sequence of their own to the workshop; we will also discuss ways that individual poems might grow into sequences.

3-Day Workshop with Michael White ~ Organic Meter When can the choice to write in meter-whether "strict" or "loose"-serve the aims of the poem in an organic way?

11 3-Day Workshop with Michael White ~ Organic Meter When can the choice to write in meter-whether "strict" or "loose"-serve the aims of the poem in an organic way? How can a poet choose among all of the available meters when writing a new poem in any given subject? If a line of poetry can be considered sonically "elevated" or "heightened," what elements are heightened, exactly, and how is this an asset to the poem? Can working in traditional meter ever be considered an experimental act? Why or why not? In this three-day generative workshop, we'll take a look at major metrical traditions in English-and then explore how each of us might use measure more effectively and intuitively. We'll do some writing in more than one meter, too... and a fair amount of clowning around.

1-Day Workshop with Al Basile ~ Great American Songbook: Song Lyrics for Poets Poets who write in meter develop strength in matching syllables in words and rhythm, some of which is useful in matching

12 1-Day Workshop with Al Basile ~ Great American Songbook: Song Lyrics for Poets Poets who write in meter develop strength in matching syllables in words and rhythm, some of which is useful in matching words to music. Because songs are sung in time, and words are matched to pitches, however, the use of some of that strength must be avoided, and a different strength must also be developed. We will practice which muscles to relax, and which to develop, starting with the resetting of a familiar lyric and continuing to the generating of a lyric for a form before a matching melody has been written. Special attention will be paid to implied rhythm and rhyme patterns, diction, and linearity and density of sentence structure.

13 1-Day Workshop with Juliana Gray ~ Humor in Poetry A poet walks into a bar. Then what? How can we combine humor with serious statement? What can we do if we re not actually, you know, funny? In this workshop we ll explore those questions and more, reading and discussing examples of humor in poetry, from light jokes to dark comedy, and workshopping students humorous verse.

14 1-Day Workshop with George Green ~ Narrative Poetry as Craft From Homer to Young Thug, poets have been storytellers, their tales enriched by the sounds and rhythms of verse. We will discuss the elaborate anecdote, the memoir/chronicle, historical testimony, and our Romantic heritage of lyrical ruminations and emotional meditations. We'll concentrate on short story poems and the contemporary ballad. Participant poems will be workshopped and epic poets are welcome.

1-Day Workshop with Hailey Leithauser ~ Big Lightning, Little Bottles - The Joys of the Short Poem This workshop will ask what attributes a poem must have to succeed, to give it the necessary juice

15 1-Day Workshop with Hailey Leithauser ~ Big Lightning, Little Bottles - The Joys of the Short Poem This workshop will ask what attributes a poem must have to succeed, to give it the necessary juice to justify its existence and send it out into the world, and how to pack all of that craft and sizzle into only a few brief lines. We will be discussing both short forms such as the triolet and rondeau as well free verse works by Kooser, Moore, Pound, Ryan, Stallings, and others. Students are encouraged to bring in their own work for critique as well as any favorite short poem they have carried for years like a credible coal in their pocket.

16 1-Day Workshop with Robert Archambeau ~ Stealing from Other Poets Immature poets imitate, wrote T.S. Eliot, mature poets steal. He was quick to add that bad poets end up defacing what they take, while good poets make it into something better, or at the very least something new. We will examine the various ways poets have stolen from one another through allusion, formal emulation, mimicry, quotation, and by methods more devious. When is poetic theft acceptable? When does it go to far? How can we profit artistically from our ill-gotten gains?

17 Critical Seminars Poetry and Mathematics with Emily Grosholz Poetry and mathematics are sister arts. The imposition of periodicity on the flow of language (lineation, metrical structure, repetition of sound) leads some poems from time to immortality, especially when reinforced by the periodicities of music. How poets encompass the infinite, especially in cosmological poems, is akin to the mathematical strategy of compactification. The folk motif that has inspired so many haunting poems, supernatural lapse of time in fairyland, has its counterpart in the notion of hyperspace. We ll read and discuss examples of such poems, and related essays.

18 Fun & Games: Ways to Teach Poetic Form with Tony Barnstone: In this seminar, I will be going over some of the techniques I've developed to teach poetic form to newcomers to meter and to make this daunting subject fun. The seminar will detail how to scaffold the class so each new skill provides the foundation for the next skill to be learned. I will also demonstrate some of the metrical games I play with my classes, and some ways to use social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Blogger) for group work, feedback, and collaborative poems. Additional topics to be touched upon include: additive syllabics; innovative stanzaic forms; the essentials of scansion; and acceptable metrical substitutions. I am hoping that participants will share their favorite techniques, as well!

Conference/Manuscript Review with Resident Poets: Susan de Sola ~ Susan de Sola s poetry has appeared in The Hudson Review, The Dark Horse and Birmingham Poetry Review, among many other publications

She holds a PhD from The Johns Hopkins University, and is the author of numerous critical essays, book chapters and the photographic chapbook Little Blue Man (Seabiscuit Press).

19 Conference/Manuscript Review with Resident Poets: Susan de Sola ~ Susan de Sola s poetry has appeared in The Hudson Review, The Dark Horse and Birmingham Poetry Review, among many other publications and anthologies, including Best American Poetry She is a past recipient of the David Reid Poetry Translation Prize, and past finalist for the Morton Marr and Able Muse Write Prizes. She holds a PhD from The Johns Hopkins University, and is the author of numerous critical essays, book chapters and the photographic chapbook Little Blue Man (Seabiscuit Press). She is Assistant Poetry Editor at Able Muse. Catherine Tufariello ~ Catherine Tufariello s book Keeping My Name was a Poets Prize winner and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist. Her poems have appeared recently in The Dark Horse, Literary Matters, Monster Verse, and Think Journal. She lives with her husband and daughter in Valparaiso, Indiana, where she works as a psychiatric nurse and a freelance editor.

20 Shirley Lim ~ Shirley Geok-lin Lim s Crossing the Peninsula received the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, a first for a woman and an Asian. Recipient of two American Book awards, she is recognized as a multigenre writer who plays with a range of poetic forms. She has published ten poetry collections, chapbooks, a memoir, three short story collections, two novels, a children s novel, and The Shirley Lim Collection. Her recent poetry collections are The Irreversible Sun, Ars Poetica for the Day, and Do You Live In? Kathrine Varnes Her book of poems, The Paragon (Word Tech 2005), contains a range of formal experimentations from the nonce to the avant garde, including a 43-sonnet crown in which two women who ve never met chat on the phone about their mutual ex-husband. Recent poems have appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Black Warrior Review, Measure, Prairie Schooner and Black Clock. Her essays on contemporary poetry and feminism have appeared in various journals and collections including Connotations, After New Formalism, and Parnassus. Varnes is also co-editor with Annie Finch of An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of their Art (University of Michigan Press 2002).

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTIONS POET BIOGRAPHIES

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTIONS POET BIOGRAPHIES 2 KEYNOTE SPEAKER David Yezzi: David Yezzi s latest books of poetry are Birds of the Air and Black Sea. His verse play Schnauzer was recently published by Exot Books.