Poetry Craft Workshop with John Morrison

The Power and Play of Discovery

John Morrison

What is more seductive in a poem than discovery? Be it fresh, new language, an overwhelming image, or an inescapable momentum like the current of a fierce river, we might all die of boredom if poetry couldn’t strike new sparks and lead us to a new aural or interior landscape. So how do we invite discovery into our work?

Our session will be part workshop, discussion and exercise, where we will share our own poems and be open to opportunities for new possibilities and strategies. We will also ask about the bloodlines and life-blood of our poems, and move the pen across the paper in vibrant explorations. As time allows, we may share our own writing “practice,” the rituals we employ to move us from first notion through revision to the version we trust to the mail. We may also step into a few models from contemporary poetry.

Come ready to share and risk a bit, and we’ll make our way to new ground.

John Morrison earned his MFA from the University of Alabama and received the 2003 C. Hamilton Bailey Poetry Fellowship from Literary Arts. His book, Heaven of the Moment, won the 2006 Rhea & Seymour Gorsline Poetry Competition and was a finalist for the 2008 Oregon Book Award in poetry. His poems have appeared in numerous national literary journals, including the Cimarron Review, Poetry East, Southern Poetry Review, and Poet Lore. He has taught poetry at the University of Alabama and Washington State University, Vancouver, and is a Writer-in-Residence for Literary Arts’ Writers in the Schools program in Portland, Oregon.

MARCH 6, SATURDAY — LAMB COTTAGE IN SKINNER BUTTE PARK

Guild members, $50, non-members, $65. Scholarships available. For more info contact tonipoet@gmail.com.