Kathleen McClung: Are You Allergic to Poetry?

1 Saturday, April 30, 10am-4pm  San Francisco
$95 members/$110 others    Cancellation/Refund Policy
Testimonials for Kathleen

If your answer is yes, then this non-allergenic poetry workshop is custom-made for you. Maybe you identify as a memoirist, novelist or playwright. Maybe you find the short story a more appetizing genre.  Maybe you write code for a living. But whatever kind of writing you do, devoting a day to reading, talking about, and cooking up some poems of your own — yes, poems — can add an extra dimension of strengths, strategies, and spice to your creative projects in any genre.

“We’ll look at the work of contemporary poets such as Ellen Bass, Indigo Moor, and Jan Beatty,” says Kathleen, “who write about the everyday in accessible, moving, and powerful ways: food, booze, jobs, insomnia, road rage, heartache. The usual.”

In addition, Kathleen will introduce you to elements of craft that can imbue your work with a stronger poetic flavor by showing you how to create more surprising combinations and juxtapositions of language, rhythm, imagery, and tone ranging from humbly evocative to in-your-face explicit. She’ll also lead you through a sampling of writing exercises designed to spark your senses, memory and imagination.

Everybody’s welcome in this focused and friendly workshop. You’ll listen closely to the words on the page and to each other’s voices as you take risks and try out tasty new, gluten-free word recipes for poets and non-poets alike.

Kathleen McClung has mentored hundreds of writers at Skyline College, the Writing Salon, and other colleges, and she has taught/advised student teachers in the credential program at Mills College. She has also edited books at small presses including UCSF Nursing Press, Food First Books, and Westview Press. She serves as a reviewer for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, sponsored by the Stanford University Libraries, sponsor/judge for the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, and coordinator of Women on Writing community events. Her poetry, memoir, and fiction appear in Mezzo Cammin, The Healing Muse, Unsplendid, Poets 11, Spirituality & Health, Ekphrasis, California Quarterly, A Bird Black as the Sun: California Poets on Crows and Ravens, and elsewhere. In 2012 Kathleen won the Rita Dove Poetry Award, and Naomi Shihab Nye selected her work as the winner of the national poetry competition sponsored by the Cultural Center of Cape Cod. Finishing Line Press published her poetry chapbook, Almost the Rowboat, in 2013.