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“The journey of developing craft is not a linear process,” says instructor Tongo Eisen-Martin, “but rather a process of expanding your powers of perception and relaxing into your singular voice on the page.”
The objective of this workshop is to share strategies for writing and editing poems generated by the idea that your poetry is a part of your one human experience taking place in and revealed by an interconnected reality. For each strategy, you will complete a corresponding in-class writing prompt drawing on your own life experiences and worldviews, as well as the critical perception of your craft. Poems will be shared both for possibilities of revision and expansion. Tongo says, "As a group, we will also work on the practice of reading poems aloud in order to realize the full potential of the poem as it exists in a shared moment."
By the end of three weeks, students will begin an approach to craft in which the objective of craft is the perpetual creation of new writing strategies and new opportunities to relax into one's own voice. This workshop is for writers of all levels and backgrounds.
Tongo Eisen-Martin is a movement worker, educator, and poet who has organized around issues of human rights and self-determination for oppressed people throughout the United States. His curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people titled “We Charge Genocide Again,” has been used as a teaching and organizing tool throughout the country. His poems have been published in Harper’s Magazine and the New York Times Magazine. His book someone’s dead already was nominated for a California Book Award. His latest book of poems Heaven Is All Goodbyes was published in the City Lights Pocket Poets Series, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and won the California Book Award and the American Book Award.
- Monday, November 26, 7:00pm-9:30pm
- Monday, December 3, 7:00pm-9:30pm
- Monday, December 10, 7:00pm-9:30pm