Writing at Centrum

Poetry Workshops at the Port Townsend Writers' Conference

Although the workshops of Dana Levin and Kim Addonizio are now full, many poetry options remain for the 2012 Port Townsend Writers' Conference. Faculty members Gary Copeland Lilley (whose 2008 PTWC class is still one of the most popular that we've ever had here), Ashley Capps, and Erin Belieu (only two spaces remaining) have space in their workshops. Ashley will be here for two weeks--you can sign up for her first week, for her second week, or for both. Register for any track here.

Gary Copeland Lilley [July 8-15]
Gary Copeland Lilley is a North Carolina native who earned his MFA from the Warren Wilson College   Program for Writers. His publications include four books of poetry, of which the most recent is "Alpha Zulu", from Ausable/Copper Canyon Press. He has taught poetry and creative writing in the scholar program of Young Chicago Authors, the Great Smokies Writing Program at the University of North Carolina-Asheville, and at Warren Wilson College. He has been a poet-in-residence at The Poetry Center of Chicago, and a visiting writer-lecturer at Colby College and at the Institute of American Indian Art.

Class Description:
“Your New Poems”
New poems. That’s right: a workshop and class that generates work, strong draft poems created and discussed by a roomful of writers. How do we sharpen our images, fine-tune the music in the language, and let the line show its well-defined muscle? Bring a draft poem or two with you to help get this started, but you will be expected to create a new draft poem every day. I might have a dynamo prompt up my sleeve, the skill of observation, of all our regions and terrains—current, past, and future—are really what informs our poetry. The goal of this class is to produce a set of draft poems to take home. Register. 

 
Ashley Capps [July 8-15 and July 15-22]
Ashley Capps was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. She received her M.F.A. in Creative  Writing from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2006. Her first book of poems, "Mistaking the Sea for Green Fields," was selected by Gerald Stern for the Akron Poetry Prize. Recent poems have appeared in Ploughshares, and the Boston Review among other magazines. She is at work on a second collection of poetry.

Class Description:  
"Encyclopoetics: getting the world into our poems, with a focus on the art of paying attention"
One of the dead ends of poetry is the conception of the poem as mainly a kind of stylized space onto which the poet poignantly maps moments of pathos and gravitas prized from the narrative arsenal of personal drama and anecdote. No one wants to be stuck next to the person at the party who does nothing but talk about herself; the same, I would argue, holds true for poetry. After all, the world is worlding, and the closer we look, the stranger and richer it becomes. I would like for us to focus on closer looking in this workshop, and to think about ways of getting more of the world into our poems; not in order to reproduce what is already visible—but to make it visible. We live in such a way that many of our physical experiences occur mechanically, their sensory element lost; through habituation or misuse, our perceptions are dulled, and we drift through coffee and traffic and see without seeing, hear without hearing, touch without feeling. In our workshop, we will explore the capacity of poetry to restore the sensations of life to ourselves and to others; to revivify the process of perception; to promote mindfulness; to recuperate empathy and a sense of connectedness; and to recover wonder. In addition to revising and revitalizing three of your own poems, you will have the opportunity to begin several new pieces based on prompts we will undertake together. We’ll have several activities based on ways of looking, including a nature walk (plant i.d.!); in-class microscope viewing (the bee’s knees! Literally!); etymological excavation (looking behind, and into, words); and for these and other activities I would like you to keep a special notebook: a noticing book, for thoughts and observations related to looking.  We will also explore poetic and non-poetic forms and devices for organizing observations and information in a poem, including encomium, syllabic stanzas, and anaphora; field guides, indexes, and encyclopedias; and we will attempt writing exercises in which we variously conceive of the poem as sunlight; the poem as walk; the poem as dictionary, etc.  We will also consult, and potentially model, poems and texts by other writers, including Walt Whitman ("Song of Myself"), Christopher Smart ("Jubilate Agno"), Marianne Moore ("The Fish"), Elizabeth Bishop, the OED, Henry David Thoreau (journals), Mary Ruefle (poems from "Cold Pluto"), Gabriel Gudding ("To the Sun at Anchor"), Gerard Manley Hopkins (notebooks) and others. Register.

Erin Belieu [July 8-15]
Erin Belieu, Centrum's Artistic Director for the Port Townsend Writers' Conference, is the author of three  collections of poetry. Her first book, "Infanta," was a winner of the National Poetry Series, selected by Hayden Carruth. "Infanta" was also chosen as a best book of the year by The Washington Post and Library Journal. Her second collection, "One Above & One Below," was the winner of the Midland Authors Prize in poetry and the Ohioana prize, and her most recent collection, "Black Box," was a finalist in 2007 for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She is currently Director of The Graduate Creative Writing Program at Florida State University. In addition to her writing, editing, and teacher, Erin Belieu is the co-founder and co-director of VIDA, a literary organization that seeks to explore critical and cultural perceptions of writing by women.

Class Description:
"Vision and Revision"
As most of the heavy lifting when making a poem happens in the revision process, we'll spend our time in this workshop discussing strategies and techniques for taking drafts to the next level. Why do some poems refuse to stand up straight? How do I construct a narrative to support the story my poem tells? Is my poem telling the best part of the story? How and why does a lyric work? What other formal choices that might suit the voice and imagery with which I'm working? There are constructive strategies one can learn to help answer these questions, ones that will keep you writing well beyond our workshop. My goal is to give you new tools for your tool box that will help you solve these conundrums when you're working on your own. This process may involve generating new poems during our time together at the conference as well as discussing the two poems you are encouraged to send in ahead. Register.

Two Optional Weeks, One Great Conference

The Port Townsend Writers' Conference has been happening every summer since 1974. Some years it ran for ten days, some years it ran for seven.

In 2012, it will run for two weeks--you can attend the week of July 8-15 or the week of July 15-22, or come for the whole two-week extravaganza. 

The July 8-15 week features Gary Copeland Lilley, Erin Belieu, and Ashley Capps; nonfiction writers Diane Roberts and Judith Kitchen; and fiction writers Benjamin Alire Sáenz and Jennine Capó Crucet.  

The July 15-22 week features poets Dana Levin, Ashley Capps, and Kim Addonizio; fiction writers Pam Houston, Susan Steinberg, and Dorothy Allison; and nonfiction writers Cheryl Strayed and Peggy Shumaker.

 Learn more about the faculty and their class descriptions here.

In addition, each afternoon during the two weeks will feature a wide variety of workshops in special topics. These classes are free to those who are registered for the full workshop experience, and are available for $50 each or $275 for an entire week if you don't want to attend the morning workshops. Check out the full schedule of afternoon workshops here.

 Finally, as yet another option, fiction writer Sam Ligon will be leading a three-day "boot camp" in the short-short story from July 12 to July 14. What a lot of fiction writers are doing is signing up for this workshop, and then staying for the following week, for a ten-day Conference.

Class Description:
"Flash-fiction Boot Camp: Three Days, Three Stories."
In the anthology Sudden Fiction, Robert Kelly refers to short-short fiction as “the insidious, sudden, alarming, stabbing, tantalizing, annihilating form… neither poetic prose nor prosy verse, but the energy and clarity typical of prose coincident in the scope and rhythm of the poem.” In the same anthology, Joyce Carol Oates writes that “[v]ery short fictions are nearly always experimental, exquisitely calibrated, reminiscent of Frost’s definition of a poem—a structure of words that consumes itself as it unfolds, like ice melting on a stove.” Very short fictions tend to rely on surprise, a hard turn at the end. They’re often elliptical or fragmented, and often shaped by tone and shadow. In this workshop, we’ll be exploring compression and limitation, evocation and implication, formal constraint and what might arise from line pressure and narrative restriction. We’ll  immerse ourselves in a fever of flash fiction reading and writing, composing and workshopping three short-short stories in three days, an intensive in the annihilating form.

Register for any track here. For more information, please call Jordan Hartt at 360-385-3102, x131 or email him at jordan(at)centrum(dot)org.  

Afternoon Workshops Now Posted

Check out the full lineup of afternoon workshop offerings happening as part of the 2012 Port Townsend Writers' Conference.

Here is a sampling: this is what is happening on only one of the workshop days. One-day afternoon-workshop passes are available for $50; $695 gets you everything that goes on for a full week--a core morning class and all afternoon workshops.

For more information about the Conference--now in its 39th consecutive year--please contact Jordan at jhartt(at)centrum(dot)org or call him at 360-385-3102, x131. Between two and four spots are still available in most workshops, except for the workshops of Cheryl Strayed and Dana Levin (full) and the workshops of Kim Addonizio, Erin Belieu, and Pam Houston (one space in each.)

Monday, July 9
8-9—Breakfast
9-11:30—Morning workshop
• Jennine Capó Crucet Room D
• Erin Belieu Room F
• Judith Kitchen Room H
• Chris Crutcher Room J
• Gary Copeland Lilley Room K
• Ashley Capps Room L
• Benjamin Alire Sáenz Room M
• Diane Roberts Room N
12-1:00—Lunch 
2-3:30—Workshops and lectures in special topics
• Midge Raymond Room N
“Setting the Scene”
Place plays an important role in any story, from offering insight into characters to creating a mood. This workshop will help you get a sense of the where in your writing, from researching places to incorporating details and dialogue. We’ll look at classic and contemporary examples of how writers use setting to flesh out stories—and a variety of writing prompts will teach you how to pay attention to place in your work.
• Wendy Call Room D
“Build Your Own Rainbow: Narrative Arc”
In this workshop we’ll talk about how to build (and rebuild) a sturdy structure for your story. How do you create a narrative arc? What might one look like? Why have one at all? With help from Eduardo Galeano and Sandra Cisneros, we’ll answer all these questions and more, then we’ll map our own color-filled arcs.
• Alex Kuo Room L
“The Poetry of Witness”
This session will begin with a short discussion about what is poetry as witness (as in Forché’s “The Colonel” and Auden’s “September 1, 1939”) before we explore various ways of writing poetry about the cultural and political implications of what we experience daily. The main focus of each session will involve directed writing assignments and provide the opportunity to read and discuss each other’s work.
• Janée Baugher Room K
“Science Poetry”
Albert Einstein says, “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle, you can live as if everything is a miracle.” Praise the atom, the aorta, the arachnid! This workshop celebrates the miracle of the Natural Sciences by demystifying writing influenced by the sciences. In this workshop you’ll be introduced to poets who use biology, chemistry, physics, and math as subject matter, and you’ll begin to flex your own science-writing muscles with the help of in-class writing prompts.
• Afternoon Freewrite Room H 
4-5—Craft lecture by Ashley Capps
5:30—Dinner
7:30—Readings by Sam Ligon; Diane Roberts
9:00—The Nine O’Clock Open-Mike Readings (Building 262)

 

Two Spaces Remain in Kim Addonizio Poetry Workshop

Kim Addonizio's poetry workshop has two spaces remaining. More information on her class, which happens the week of July 15-22, is available here.

A great review of her book "Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within" is here. She is also the author of another poetry guide, co-written with Dorianne Laux, entitled "The Poet's Companion."

Her class description: "One of the most satisfying elements of poetry is the delight of being surprised, whether by a turn of thought or a turn of phrase. The unexpected wakes us up and brings us into the moment of the poem. Yet too often, the poems we write can feel predictable, simply describing events without getting to that level of mystery--and play--where poetry lives. “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader,” as Frost famously said. Appreciating and cultivating that wild aspect of writing is going to be our mission this week. Come prepared to write, and also bring three poems, with copies, you’d like to work on. Expect the unexpected!" Register.

Fiction Workshops at the 2012 PTWC

Six different literary fiction workshops will be happening as part of the 2012 Port Townsend Writers' Conference.

Dorothy Allison will be leading a July 15-22 workshop entitled: "Getting to the Good Stuff". Her class description: "We will begin with a brief selection of a manuscript on which you wish to start or start anew. You will be asked to work from questions or suggestions provided by the instructor--and exchange drafts with other workshop members. The workshop will then focus on work on the page, with detailed attention to critiquing drafts and bringing characters and language to a new level of engagement. Reference for the workshop will be Ursula LeGuin's "Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew"--an invaluable resource for literary terms and explications of voice, point of view and place." Register.

Pam Houston will be leading a revision workshop. Her class description: "It was great when it happened, gorgeous when it lived in your imagination, transcendent as you hit the "on" button of your computer and got to work. Now that it is on the page it is seeming both flat and unapproachable. In this workshop we will look at drafts of stories and novel chapters that aren't quite making it, and see if we can figure out how to make them not just good but great. We’ll address structure (making sure that form is following function or vice versa), narrative tension, voice, point of view, dialogue, and beginnings and endings. We will talk about how to find the real pain spot of a story and we will force ourselves to slow down where it hurts. We will make sure that our glimmers, those hunks of the physical world that sent us into the story in the first place, have been remade in all of their complexity in language. We will talk about the difficult moments when writing feels like juggling an apple, a chainsaw, and a toaster, and celebrate the rare but intoxicating moments when the place we were most afraid to go did not kill us after all. We will do some brief, nightly exercises, and I would like you to read Mary Gaitskill's "Don't Cry" and Tim Winton's "The Turning," before you come to the conference. Register.

Jennine Capó Crucet will be leading a July 8-15 class. Her debut story collection, "How to Leave Hialeah,"  won the 2009 Iowa Short Fiction Prize, the 2010 John Gardner Book Award, the 2010 Devil's Kitchen Reading Award, and was named a Best Book of the Year by the Miami Herald, the Miami New Times, and the Latinidad List. Jennine is the recipient of the John Winthrop Prize & Residency for Emerging Writers, scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and her work has been a finalist for both the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize and the Missouri Review Editor’s Prize. Her stories have appeared in multiple literary journals.

Class Description:
Sometimes, all that stands in the way of us working on our book projects is a little accountability. In this workshop, we'll form a supportive and enthusiastic space where we'll generate tons of new material and break through the dreaded writer's block. On day one, we'll each set a personal goal for the number of new pages we want to write each day--one, five, ten, whatever you feel you can really do. From then on, we'll hold each other accountable to that goal, bringing new material--no matter what shape it's in--into the workshop. We'll read our fellow writers' pages and ask questions of the work and the characters, and we'll use these questions to generate the next day's material. You get to hear right away what from your piece is sparking the reader's interest, what's confusing them, and best of all, you'll feel real pressure to keep going. Everyone involved understands that this is new, first-draft material, so there's no pressure to be perfect: this is about rekindling your love and excitement for your novel--about getting your ideas out quickly, even if it's messy. We'll also talk about ways to keep the momentum going and do in-class exercises that teach us how to stay disciplined once we're back at our desks. Ideal for writers who are stalled on a novel project or who have an idea for a novel or novella and just haven't gotten down to the tough stuff yet, this workshop provides a concentrated amount of time and support to add significant length to a manuscript in progress. Not for the faint of heart, but definitely for those looking to get their book (or potential book) into swimsuit-weather shape. Come with a project in progress or in mind; spandex optional. Register.

Susan Steinberg will be leading a July 15-22 class in short fiction. Her description: "Now that boundary-pushing fiction writers have paved the way for us to try out alternative forms, why adhere to the traditional narrative arc? It’s perfect for some stories, but not all stories can conform to that shape; not all should. Some stories are nonlinear, some are fragmented, some are voice-driven. Some stories borrow from poetry, some from nonfiction. In this workshop, we will discover the best directions for your short fiction. In other words, we will consider what your stories are demanding and what choices you can make, keeping an eye on the inextricable relationship of form and content and the multitude of formal options available to us. In addition to looking at short works by a range of contemporary writers who successfully, and often subtly, undo the expectations of conventional fiction (including Lydia Davis, David Foster Wallace, Denis Johnson, Amy Hempel), we will write short prose pieces every day, trying on new strategies. And if more traditional strategies are what’s best for your work, that’s fine too. You should expect to leave this course with several solid drafts of either new or old work. This is a good workshop for short stories, flash fiction, and stand-alone novel excerpts." Register.

Benjamin Alire Sáenz [July 8-15]
Benjamin Alire Sáenz is the author of such novels as "Carry Me Like Water," "Dark and Perfect Angels," "The House of Forgetting," "In Perfect Light," and "Names on a Map", as well as "Elegies in Blue," "Dreaming the End of War" and "The Book of What Remains." He has taught at the University of Texas at El Paso for the past twenty years and lives, writes, loves, hates, and breathes on the U.S./Mexico border.

Class Description: 
"A Vast Universe: The Art of Writing the Short Story."  1. You must somehow communicate the complexity of your characters without driving the reader away with explanations. This isn’t a cocktail party—don’t waste time on introductions. A reader must know the characters and know them immediately. There is no time to waste.  2. Get to the heart of the matter without unnecessary delay. Something has to happen and it has to happen soon. There is no time to waste.  3. The characters must speak with real voices. They should talk like people, not like ideas. No story can work without mastering the art of dialogue  4. Write well and carefully but don’t fall in love with your own writing. Beautiful, lyrical sentences are at the service of a greater good. Fall in love, instead, with the story you’re telling and the characters that are living the story.  5. Ask yourself this: Why does this story matter? Why does it need to be told?  6. There is more than one way to tell a story. Structure and plot matter. Choose well.  7. Endings to stories are not inevitable. They just have to feel inevitable.  8. A short story should have all of the ambitions and pleasures of a novel.  9. When I am reading a great short story, I am happy to be lost in the vast universe of the writer. Be ready to produce a short story during the course of this workshop. I will send out reading assignments to all participants at the beginning of the summer. In addition, each participant should send out via e-mail the first five pages of a story at least two weeks before the workshop. We will discuss those pages on the first day of the workshop.

Sam Ligon [July 12-15]
Sam Ligon is the author of the short-story collection “Drift and Swerve” and the novel “Safe in Heaven Dead.” His stories have appeared in such journals as Alaska Quarterly Review, StoryQuarterly, and New England  Review. He teaches at Eastern Washington University’s Inland Northwest Center for Writers, and is the editor of Willow Springs.
 
Class Description:
"Flash-fiction Boot Camp: Three Days, Three Stories."
In the anthology Sudden Fiction, Robert Kelly refers to short-short fiction as “the insidious, sudden, alarming, stabbing, tantalizing, annihilating form… neither poetic prose nor prosy verse, but the energy and clarity typical of prose coincident in the scope and rhythm of the poem.” In the same anthology, Joyce Carol Oates writes that “[v]ery short fictions are nearly always experimental, exquisitely calibrated, reminiscent of Frost’s definition of a poem—a structure of words that consumes itself as it unfolds, like ice melting on a stove.” Very short fictions tend to rely on surprise, a hard turn at the end. They’re often elliptical or fragmented, and often shaped by tone and shadow. In this workshop, we’ll be exploring compression and limitation, evocation and implication, formal constraint and what might arise from line pressure and narrative restriction. We’ll  immerse ourselves in a fever of flash fiction reading and writing, composing and workshopping three short-short stories in three days, an intensive in the annihilating form. Register.

Two Spaces Left

We're down to two spaces in Pam Houston's fiction workshop (July 15-22, 2012) and one space for Cheryl Strayed's July 15-22 creative nonfiction workshop.

We're also now accepting registration for the Conference's afternoon-workshop lineup; these classes feature a wide range of topics in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and cross-genre offerings. These drop-in workshops range in tuition from $50 to $275, depending on how many you want to do each week.

Remember that the 2012 Writers' Conference will happen in back-to-back weeks. You can come for either week--or for both weeks. We also have a four-day-only class in short fiction being led by Sam Ligon the weekend of July 12-15. Many fiction writers are signing up for that class, and then sticking around the second week and taking a different fiction class to create a ten-day experience for themselves.

Morning and Afternoon Sessions

We're about 95% complete with the 2012 Port Townsend Writers' Conference schedule. To see the full lineup of morning and afternoon workshop leaders and class sessions, please follow this link: http://www.centrum.org/writing/wc-afternoons.html

The 2012 Conference will happen over two weeks: July 8-15 and July 15-22. In addition, fiction writer Sam Ligon will be leading a short story workshop July 12-15.