I want to let you know about a 5 week course I’ll be teaching this Fall at Richard Hugo House in Seattle.
The Words to Say It: Writing about Illness, Trauma and Healing.
Course Description:
By focusing on the craft of writing we can transform personal experience into art. Readings will include excerpts from: Poetry in Medicine; The Healing Art: A Doctor’s Black Bag of Poetry; Poetry as Survival; Beauty is a Verb, and writers Alicia Ostriker, Lucia Perillo, Susan Sontag, Lucille Clifton, Anatole Broyard, and Kevin Young, among many others.
The course will be both poetry and creative non-fiction oriented. You may write in whatever form you want.
We will look at forms, how specific forms of elegy, narrative, the lyric and prose help hold and extend the language/story.
We will stretch our language capacities, looking past cliche to surprising images.
We will look at negative and positive space, e.g. what is and is not “on the page”, engaging the reader in active imagination.
Each week we will read, discuss and write. In the last class students may bring a piece of their own to workshop for feedback.
DATES: Saturdays 9/23, 9/30 (note, we will skip 10/7 as I have a prior commitment), 10/14, 10/21, 10/28.
TIME: 10 am – 12 pm
LOCATION: Hugo House, 1021 Columbia St, Seattle, WA 98104
Important dates as you spread the word:
Member Registration – Aug. 15
General Registration – Aug. 22
Scholarship Applications Due – Aug. 25
Early Bird Pricing Ends – Aug. 28
Register here.