In this generative workshop, we’ll focus on the twin engines that move a poem—the sentence and the line. In revision, we’ll consider how we might step back from our own intentions so that we might learn more from the poem itself—and in this way discover ‘doorways’ that open new passageways into the poem. This workshop will cover a lot of ground (pacing, erasure, silence, visual poetry, and more) while remaining focused on the possibilities available to us within the sentence and the poetic line. Brian will share handouts detailing these concepts and featuring poems from contemporaries like Diane Seuss, Ocean Vuong, Ilya Kaminsky, Tim Seibles, and more—as well as global voices that (he hopes) might become some of your new favorite poets.
Brian Turner is the author of a memoir, My Life as a Foreign Country, and two collections of poetry, Here, Bullet and Phantom Noise. Three new collections of poetry will be published by Alice James Books in 2023. He’s the editor of The Kiss and co-edited The Strangest of Theatres. He’s published work in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, Harper’s, and other fine journals. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, and he’s received a USA Hillcrest Fellowship in Literature, an NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry, the Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship, a US-Japan Friendship Commission Fellowship, the Poets’ Prize, and a Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. He lives in Orlando, Florida.
Brian will be accepting poems up to 3 pages for our OCWW Poetry Contest. Please see the manuscript drop down on our OCWW website at ocww.info for details.
