Hey Marylhurst campers!
I’m so glad to be writing with you at show:tell 2014. Here are those links I mentioned in class, for further explorations. May you get lost in the kinship between poems and poets, may link lead on to link and especially on to more of your own poems.
1, 2, 3 Make a Poem workshop
Day 1: More practice for getting words on the page
Read Sylvia Plath’s “Tulips” and circle all of her metaphors and similes. Create metaphor “templates,” then write lines that use the same kind of metaphor for each image. Use one or two of the resulting lines to lead you into a poem.
Get inspired at Hazel & Wren
Day 2: More practice for re-vision
Try rewriting your poem in a different form, such as a villanelle, sestina, or ghazal.
Try this nonce form, the “semi-glosa,” invented by poet Barbara Crooker. Then invent your own form!
Day 3: How do you know when a poem is finished?
The drafts of Sylvia Plath’s poem “Stings”
The drafts of Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “One Art”
Draft, a really cool lit journal that’s all about first, second, third (etc) drafts
Tattoo & Identity workshop
This workshop on tattoo, writing, and identity was inspired by metal/enamel artist Martha Banyas’ concept of “invisible tattoos” and her short video “The Mysterious Lives of Makers.” In her metal sculptures and paintings, Banyas uses botanical imagery in tattoos on human figures.
We’ve all had experiences that have ‘marked’ us, either visibly or invisibly. Where do these experiences live in our bodies? How do they shape our identities? How can we carry them in our writing and visual art?
These are big questions, and we try a lot of different exercises in this workshop. Here are additional resources and ways to use some of the passageways we explore:
A Thousand Words, an essay about writing from photographs, The New Yorker
self portraits, body image: photography
Shelley Jackson’s skin quilt, a collective tattooed poem
personality quizzes as fodder for poems
Tattoo Highway lit journal
Melissa Poulin 