Writing at Centrum

The Countdown Continues...Thirteen Days To Go!

We're now thirteen days--fewer than two weeks!--away from the thirty-sixth annual Port Townsend Writers' Conference. To celebrate, here's a picture taken during last year's Conference. Very Northwest: the water, the rocks, the wet sand, the empty blue sky.

For those of you who are not registered for the Conference, there are still ways to enjoy everything that the Conference has to offer. The public Readings and Lectures series will present such writers as Chris Abani, Kim Barnes, Mark Doty, Peter Orner, and Robert Wrigley giving free public readings and craft lectures every afternoon at 4 pm and every evening at 7:30 pm. (The week of July 12-18)

The only other way to still get involved is through the afternoon workshops. These go from 2 to 3:30 pm every afternoon, featuring a full spectrum of topics in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. For more information, please call 360.385.3102, x131, or browse our afternoon workshop page.

Continuing the Countdown to the Port Townsend Writers' Conference

As we mark down the time to the thirty-sixth annual Port Townsend Writers' Conference, we're showing a series of photos taken during the 2008 gathering. The building to the right might look familiar to you! Since 1974, it's hosted such writers as Conference founder Bill Ransom, Kenneth Rexroth, Ken Kesey, Alice Walker, James Welch, and many, many others. This year, it'll be the site of workshops by such writers as Chris Abani, Kim Barnes, Mark Doty, Robert Wrigley, Peter Orner, and many others, as well as the site of the Conference bookstore, computer lab, and all of the morning freewrites.

We'll see you here soon! If you aren't registered, and would like to be a part of the gathering, please call 360.385.3102, x131.

Countdown to the Port Townsend Writers' Conference!

We're at twenty days, now, until the thirty-sixth annual Port Townsend Writers' Conference! As we mark the time down, we're showing a series of photos taken by PTWC alum Elizabeth Thorpe. I love the one on the left, here. A palette of gray and light blue, the hidden light's reflection on the water, the dark sand like a bass note on the bottom layer.

Right now, PTWC writers are making their flight plans--remember to register for the shuttle!--sending in manuscripts, and getting ready for what will be a fabulous week.

Countdown to the Port Townsend Writers' Conference

There are only twenty-four days to go until to the thirty-sixth annual (and largest ever) Port Townsend Writers' Conference! To celebrate, Conference alum and 2009 resident Elizabeth Thorpe sent us this beautiful picture of the sunrise breaking open above Whidbey Island; or to bring in Homer: dawn showing again, with rosy fingers.

Check-in starts Sunday, July 12 at 3:30 pm for the thirty-sixth consecutive Conference. Everything is completely sold out, except for the afternoon workshops, but the readings and lectures (see link to the right) are free to the public and should be amazing this year.

One Poetry Option Left

There is only one poetry option left at the 2009 Port Townsend Writers' Conference--one space is available in Adrian Castro's poetry workshop. All other options have sold out; waiting lists, however, have been started.

Space also remains in the afternoon workshops.

To reserve your space, call our Registrar directly at 360.385.3102, x114.

Registration Options for the July 12-19 Port Townsend Writers' Conference

The 2009 Port Townsend Writers' Conference continues to fill at a record-setting pace. Kim Barnes's creative nonfiction workshop, Denise Chávez's creative nonfiction workshop, Chris Abani's fiction workshop, Mark Doty's poetry workshop, and Robert Wrigley's poetry workshop have all filled, and waiting lists have been started.

Only two prose options remain, and both are beginning to reach capacity. Peter Orner's fiction workshop has limited space, and the Tony Cohan nonfiction workshop also has space available. For poets, the Adrian Castro poetry workshop has space available.

Registration is available by following this link or by calling Centrum at 360.385.3102, x114.

"Saint Nobody": A New Collection of Poems by Amy Lemmon

Very few of us are sitting in an ivy-covered tower when we settle down to enjoy a new collection of poems. More likely, we’re on a rattling subway train, sitting in a rainsoaked ferry line, or stealing a few minutes at a corporate office. (I know, I know, nobody ever does that.)

Poet Amy Lemmon, whose just-released collection “Saint Nobody” is now available from Red Hen Press, understands—as did Whitman and Eliot, not to mention Tu Fu and Li Po—the pace of her contemporary readers’ worlds, and opens the collection with a poem, “Disclaimer”, that is half corporate-speak, and half a turn toward the moon.

In 2009, language is big business, and is used for company policies, blockbuster tag lines, advertisting jingles, and political-speak. To write poetry is to reclaim our own tongues. The opening of the poem, in what in the text are double-spaced lines, invites the reader to leave purchased language for language that is soaked in the body and the earth:

_{If you are reading this
it is due to an error,
 an oversight, or some otherwise
 unprecedented act on the part
 of the Management.}

The poem continues in the corporate language on the left side, while on the right the words begin to bleed: a birth, the moon, “embarrassing nipples,” blood, apologies.

Blessing of the Animals

"Brenda Miller writes with such extraordinary grace and intimacy that, despite our weariness and fears, we find ourselves falling in love with the world all over again," notes Kim Barnes. 

In her newest collection of essays, "Blessing of the Animals," from Eastern Washington University Press, Miller builds on the "delicate, elegant, and occasionally devastating" (writes John D'Agata) form that first captured national attention in 2002's "Season of the Body."

With pinpoint accuracy and lyrical honesty, Miller's work cuts to the heart and to the bone. The nineteen essays in "Blessing of the Animals"--including the two Pushcart Prize-winning essays: the title essay "Blessing of the Animals," and "Raging Waters"--pierce to the center of human--and non-human--longing, desire, and change.  

Brenda Miller spends the academic year as associate professor of English at Western Washington University in Bellingham, where she is the editor-in-chief of the Bellingham Review. Her collection of essays, "Season of the Body" was a finalist for the PEN American Center Book Award and she has received a number of Pushcart Prizes for her work. Her essays have appeared in such periodicals as the Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, and the Sun. She led full-house writing workshops at Centrum last summer.

Centrum Writers Exchange Registration Update

Carolyn Forché's May 7-10 poetry workshop, part of the "Literature of Witness" event with Micheline Aharonian Marcom, is now completely sold out and a waiting list has been started.

For the July 12-19 Port Townsend Writers' Conference, the Chris Abani, Kim Barnes, Mark Doty, and Robert Wrigley workshops are all full, with waiting lists started. Two spaces only remain in the Denise Chávez creative nonfiction workshop, which is focused on writing about family. 

For poets, space is available in Adrian Castro's workshop; for fiction writers: Peter Orner; and for nonfiction writers, Tony Cohan will be leading a workshop. Also: noted Spanish-English translator Liliana Valenzuela will be leading a workshop, as well.   

Registration is available online by following this link, as well as by calling Centrum at 360.385.3102, x114.

Matthew and Michael Dickman

There is a great new article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about the poetry-writing twins Matthew and Michael Dickman, both of whom have titles forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press. 

We're also celebrating a great Gary Lilley reading that took place at the Joseph F. Wheeler Theater on January 31. To watch an extended interview not only with Lilley, but also Copper Canyon Press editor Michael Wiegers, please follow this link!