Workshop: Poetry
This workshop is currently FULL. To be added to the waitlist, please email taryn@mainewriters.org.
Re-Seeing the Poem: Revision As a Co-Creative Practice
Poetry with Arisa White
How can we re-see what we’ve written with fresh eyes? The body and the organization of the natural and material world often gives us insight into how we can bring balance and form to a poem that feels banal and lifeless. Using a series of revision exercises based on deep questioning, the senses, natural elements, and cardinal points, participants will identify new beginnings, create poetic structures that better support content, and work collectively and in peer-review groups to get perspective on and solutions for how to enliven the poem’s ecosystem.
SUBMIT: Revision #1: Who Am I?
After registering, participants in the poetry workshop are asked to send ONE poem for critique/discussion during the retreat no later than 9:00 a.m. on April 21. Please follow the instructions below and email the manuscripts as attachments to taryn@mainewriters.org with the subject line: “WHITE BLACK FLY MSS.” *Word files are preferred, but you may also send a PDF.
Submit a one-page poem that you are unsure what the poem is asking—asking of you, asking of the world, asking about life. This poem may be a complete first draft or the start of something that has stalled. In preparation for our first workshop, you will read everyone's poems. For each poem, including your own, you will jot down two questions: (1) the question you feel the poem is asking; and (2) a question you want to ask the poem.
Arisa White is a Cave Canem fellow, Sarah Lawrence College alumna, an MFA graduate from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and author of several chapbooks. Her debut full-length collection, Hurrah’s Nest, was a finalist for the 2013 Wheatley Book Awards, 82nd California Book Awards, and nominated for a 44th NAACP Image Awards. Her second collection, A Penny Saved, inspired by the true-life story of Polly Mitchell, was published by Willow Books, an imprint of Aquarius Press in 2012. Her latest full-length collection, You’re the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened, was published by Augury Books and nominated for the 29th Lambda Literary Awards. Most recently, Arisa co-authored, with Laura Atkins, Biddy Mason Speaks Up, a middle-grade biography in verse on the midwife and philanthropist Bridget “Biddy” Mason, which is the second book in the Fighting for Justice series. Biddy Mason Speaks Up was awarded the Maine Literary Award for Young People’s Literature, Nautilus Book Award Gold Medal for Middle-Grade Nonfiction, and the Independent Publisher Book Awards Silver Medal for Multicultural Juvenile Nonfiction. Forthcoming in March 2021 is the poetic memoir Who’s Your Daddy. A native New Yorker, living in central Maine, Arisa is an assistant professor in creative writing at Colby College and is also an advisory board member for Gertrude and a community advisory board member for Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance.