The William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences
Ph. 617.287.5850
Fax 617.287.5755
2009 Workshop
In 2009 workshops will be organized around themes. Writers will have the opportunity to sign up for one and two week working sessions covering topics such as “The Flexibility of Form,” “Writing Our Way Home,” “Beyond the Lyric ‘I’,” “Writing at the Juncture of Memory and Imagination,” “Building Full, Real Characters,” and “Starting Off.” There will be special events and workshops on Political Theater with members of the Bread and Puppet Theater, Multi-Media Interactive Art, and Translation. Readings and other evening events, which will take place in the Boston/Cambridge area, will feature faculty and student readings and include a night of music, entertainment, and local culture.
One Week Workshops
June 15th-19th
Marilyn Nelson – The
Flexibility of Form (Poetry)
COURSE FULL:
Martín Espada – Crafting the Manuscript (Poetry)
June 22nd-26th
COURSE FULL Fred Marchant: "Poetry and Listening"
Two-Week Workshops
Nahid Rachlin:
"Fiction Workshop - Building Full, Real Characters"
COURSE FULL: Martha
Collins:
"Writing Beyond the Lyric I"
Demetria Martínez and Lady Borton: "Writing Our Way Home, a Memoir Workshop"
Doug Anderson: "Form & Freedom: The Persistence of Poetic Form"
Bruce Weigl – Writing
at the Juncture of Memory and the Imagination (Poetry)
Special Offerings
John Bell & Mike
Romanyshyn - The Art of
Canta Storia: Using Language and Pictures to Make Political Theater\
Danielle Georges –
Translation Workshop
Visiting Faculty
Ban Al-Mahfodh, Erica Mena, Nguyen Ba Chung,
John F. Deane,
Dragan Dragojlovic, Sam Hamill, Alma Lazarevska,
Anne Loyer, Askold Melnyczuk, Erica Mena, Robert Nichols, Catherine
Parnell, Lloyd
Schwartz, Taylor Stoehr, Nguyen Quang Thieu, Hanh Tran
Nahid Rachlin: "Fiction Workshop - Building Full, Real Characters"
To reach readers in fiction, it is important to develop believable, three-dimensional characters. How do you create complex, real people within the context of plot, dialogue, viewpoint, voice? This is the question we will try to answer. The class sessions will be mainly devoted to students’ own work-- short stories, chapters of novels, novellas-- which we will read and comment on (please some pages of your work, double-spaced, no longer than fifteen pages, to the first class). I will also give class exercises, if time permists. In the first session we will devote some time to a general discussion of the craft of writing fiction and also cover some publishing aspects of writing-- how to go about getting an agent, writing a cover letter, what to expect from the publishing world today. The criticism will be constructive. We will point out strengths as well as weaknesses and make suggestions for improvement.
Bruce Weigl: "Writing at the Juncture of Memory and the Imagination"
Relying on a number of exercises and prompts, our focus will be on liberating us from our typically narrow regard for diction that seems to occur from trying too hard to tell the truth, or to render what we believe is actuality. Put more simply, we'll be writing about our own lives and our own experiences, but we'll do it from the perspective of our imaginations, and not simply from our memory.
Martha
Collins: "Writing Beyond the Lyric I"
In this two-week workshop, we will focus as much as possible on participants' poems that move beyond personal experience and into material that involves historical, social, political, and other research, without sacrificing personal involvement and feeling. You needn't have written this kind of poetry before (though you're welcome to bring it to the workshop if you have): you will be encouraged to explore and write during the two-week period. This workshop grows out of the two sessions I offered last year; for those who missed those sessions, I will offer a shortened version this year. Your work will be discussed in the workshop at least once a week, and with me in one individual conference. Plan on writing a lot during the two weeks.
Danielle Georges: Translation Workshop
This workshop will serve as an introduction to translation—and will contain both a theoretical and a practical component. Students will work on their own translations of sample and poetic texts provided by the instructor, as well as on material they may bring to the workshop. While knowledge of a second language is helpful, it is not required.
We will translate from several languages into English. All Joiner Center participants are welcome.
Fred
Marchant: "Poetry and Listening"
COURSE FULL
This workshop grows out of the proposition that listening can often be far more than a passive mode of perception. In our readings and discussions we will explore instances where “deep” and active listening is central or otherwise allied to the poetic endeavor. For new writing, we will practice listening to “voices” that come from within, from other people, or from even beyond the human. The goal will be to use the art of listening well and listening deeply to help each writer generate at least three new poems. Everyone in this workshop can expect to have one new poem examined in detail in group discussion. Participants should plan to submit one or more new poems at each class meeting for my reading and response, and participants should also plan on having an individual conference with me during the week of our workshop. Open to anyone not already enrolled in a two-week workshop.
Demetria Martínez and Lady Borton: "Writing Our Way Home, a Memoir Workshop"
In this workshop we will explore ways to write
about how our personal stories collide with history. Many of us came of
age during the American war in Vietnam, or during movements that would
mark our lives, directly or indirectly. These include the struggles for
the rights of blacks, Chicanos, Native Americans, Asians, women, gays,
etc. Today we are living in the shadow of the Iraq War and at the
epicenter of an economic catastrophe. Writing memoir is a way of
placing our lives within this larger historical narrative and charging
both with meaning.
Our stories exist side by side with others thanks to mass migrations
and to the internet. Vietnamese people we knew only as "the enemy" are
now our neighbors; we work in buildings by day that "illegal aliens"
clean by night. Muslim women in scarves pass us on the street, another
face of "the enemy" brought to us by the so-called war on terror. We
log on and and travel the world, reading the poetry of Palestinians in
Gaza and memos emailed by Mayan Indians planning an uprising in the
Andes. We can no longer see our stories as isolated. We can no longer
buy the "official story" as dictated to us by the authorities. We know
to much. This is good news for writing, particularly for memoir.
We have at hand any number of tools for writing memoir that make it
possible to innovate, to tell of our lives and times in original and
beautiful ways. We have a tradition to draw upon as well, and in the
workshop we will provide samples of writing from around the world.
Individual consults with Demetria and Lady will allow for feedback on
specific projects.
Lady is the author of books about her life in Vietnam and how she was
welcomed into the world of the Vietnamese people. Demetria's books
include a collection of autobiographical essays rooted in the
Chicano/indigenous culture of New Mexico. War and its social
consequences are at the heart of their work as writers, translators,
and activists.
Doug Anderson: "Form & Freedom: The Persistence of Poetic Form"
When most people think of formal poetry they think rhyme, particularly end rhyme. In fact, the formal aspects of poetry are much more complex. The rigor and punch of a line often comes from a disciplined knowledge of form, especially with attention to the internal music of the words. At the end of modernism we are called back to more than the merely visual image. We seem to have circled back through hip-hop and other heavily rhymed popular forms to something more complex. In our time, poetry is being called to innovation more than any time since the end of the 19th century. This workshop will lead with form, and explore the paradox that limitation sometimes produces a wild freedom.
Marilyn Nelson : "The Flexibility of Form "
In this workshop there will be formal assignments (eg, write a sonnet; write 8 lines of blank verse; write a sequence of 4 quatrains, etc.) and discussion, in workshop format, as to what what we can do to push the envelope of form, allow form to be flexible, let form serve the demands of the poem.
Anne Loyer : "The Odysseus Project: Finding Home - Multimedia Arts Workshop, Visual Poem
Starting from short texts, participants will explore the theme of finding home using digital collage techniques. Participants are encouraged to bring old letters, documents, photos (printed or on CD) and video clips, which will be used as raw material to be incorporated in the art-making process. We will be exploring the territory where memory and the present meet. Participants will combine recordings of their voices with other sounds, text, and old and new images. Using basic techniques in digital image and video editing software (Photoshop and FinalCutPro) participants will create visual poems that unfold over time. The final piece can be taken home on CD or posted and shared on the web.
The Art of Canta Storia: Using Language and Pictures to Make Political Theater
Employing a form of theater found in many parts of the world to present epic theater and tell traditional stories, we will work together quickly to make a show with the themes, ideas and stories from the participants. Developed into a contemporary street theater form by the Bread and Puppet Theater, Canta Storia (sung story) is a great technique for combining visual ideas with text to produce unexpected and thought provoking juxtapositions. In the first 2 1/2 hour workshop we will work on themes and produce the pictures. In the second we will concentrate on presentation by inventing song, choreography and narration. The end result will be presented at the close of the session on the 26th. All welcome: writers, musicians, visual artists, political philosophers and thinkers of any type. No prior performance experience necessary. Please come with stories and ideas for short (2 - 10 minute) presentations on the state of the world - yours and ours.