Showing posts with label antioch writers workshop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label antioch writers workshop. Show all posts

Saturday, August 11, 2012

More Antioch Highlights: Poetry with Jim Daniels

Part of the Antioch week involves an afternoon workshop group where participants either create work or critique existing work. In my workshop with Jim Daniels, a well known poet who also writes screenplays and fiction, we submitted ten poems a month ahead.  These were posted on a private link to view and copy so we could be prepared to discuss one anothers poems.



On the first day Jim quotes a tweet from Megan Fox we live in a world where losing your phone is more dramatic than losing your virginity.



Jim discusses his expectations and goals for the week. Your packets are works in progress. You all need some help with the poems. His goal is to help improve poems. A residual effect of commenting on other peoples writing is that transfers to your own work. We are trying to help one another find a voice and do it better, not to rewrite each others poems in our own aesthetic.



Jim feels its important to have strangers look at your work. People who know you know what the poem is about, but we leave out details others need.



He believes Good critique is constructive and beneficial, and is not meant to discourage writing. . (Ive been to workshops where either one or more participant or the instructor makes you want to burn everything youve written.)



Try not to focus on technique, but focus on engaging discussion, Hh says. Participate, avoid passing judgment, and make specific suggestions for revision. It's not an in exact process. We all have biases. Jims bias is toward clarity.  He wants to feel something below the neck and have an emotional payoff at the end.



With ten participants, ten poems each and five days, we would not have time to discuss our complete packets. Jim had us pick two we felt needed the most work. In the end we had enough time to do here poems each.



While most of the week was spent work shopping poems,  Jim provides some insights, such  as the title is the doorway to a poem. It is a literal or tonal grounding, but not both. The poem Autumn Comes to Martins Ferry, Ohio, produces a physical grounding of time and place, whereas a poem entitled Pity for Blondes provides a tonal grounding.



A good title cannot do both.



In short poems there is more pressure on the title to provide grounding and contrast, which he terms the Zero Circle- where everything and nothingness compress together. He cites Robert Blys The Sea & The Honeycomb (a book of tiny poems) as an example for us to study.



Another interesting point I learned this week is the Sandwich Theory. Daniels claims in drafts we tend to begin and end with bread (My love of back-story!!!), burying the interesting stuff inside too much dry bread..



He recommends a book called Poetry is a Kind of Lying. This recommendation s made in context of a discussion around how you cant write about a subject in one poem. Get obsessed and stay obsessed. It may take many poems to express the idea.



While critiquing someones villanelle, I learned there is more pressure on the inside lines, non repeated lines. They illuminate the tension against the repeated lines.



If we're stuck sometimes point of view is the problem.Second person can work by  creating a kind of intimacy not found in third person, and is less self centered than first.

Daniels reinforced how Discovery and surprise is important in the poem..



He also points out how  pop culture references like Coke, movie stars, etc. are becoming more common.,



He recommends reading journals before submitting work. Zoetrope.com helps one browse literary magazines to see one’s work fits.



While we didnt do any exercises, Jim showed us some samples of a project he did with kids in Pittsburgh where they created Self portrait poems from objects in pockets.
Happy Writing.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Creative Nonfiction Workshop with Jerry Dennis

At Antioch, I also sat in on Jerry Dennis’s Creative Nonfiction (CNF) talks. He is a master storyteller and a swell writer. (I am currently reading his book The Living Great Lakes.

He says our goal (and challenge)in CNF is to take a personal story and make it universal. He likens this process to fishing tales, which all have a narrative arc.

Biography, journalism, and travel writing are nonfiction, but they are not necessarily Creative nonfiction.

The key difference is CNF is told with a narrative arc. CNF writers use fiction like techniques to tell a story, yet the story is based on truth. (Jerry recommends studying legal briefs to study language.)

He cites Sue Williams Silverman "Fearless Confection: a Writer's Guide to Memoir", as a good source, as well as her suggested reading list.
www suewilliamssilverman.com

Here are several examples of CNF:

Memoir is autobiography that is not the whole story. Usually a memoir shows only a brief period of time in the author's life. A good example is This Boy's Life, by Tobias Wolff. The memoir covers a period of about five years of Wolff's boyhood.)

(Biography- is less creative form than memoir. Tells the facts, but not necessarily a story. Relies more on "telling.")
Autobiography- 1st person memoir often a public figure

Immersion Journalism, like Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. (The author lived for a year working minimum wage jobs to see how one survives doing that.)

Personal essay - where an author refelcts on an idea or experience. A personal story that has wide appeal.(I recall a fine essay a student of mine once wrote about seeing the ocean for the first time. It was his own experience, yet the details placed the reader at the scene with him.)

Meditative essay and Lyric essay share some of the qualities of personal essays. Think Diane Ackerman or .
in all cases, CNF writers pay attention to narrative, language, and reflection. Like good poetry, CNF is not just about the writer, even if the piece is a memoir. The purpose goes beyond the self. For example, Jerry's The Living Great Lakes includes stories and scenes of his adventures on the lakes, but the book is not about him; it's a living history of the lakes.

Jerry discusses the Terrible Blank Page: What to Write?. All writers suffer anxiety in front of the blank page or the blinking cursor. Jerry begins with an image, such as skating on a frozen lake. He believes images help engage and ground the reader. “[Creative Nonfiction] should give you more than expectations. It should explode.” He recommends reading Ian Frazier, who conducts immersion journalism, ‘relevant tangents just for the joy of it’, and E.B. White, who writes unexpected sentences. Jerry discusses how “surprise is crucial in nonfiction, as in any form of writing. “ I want to read a sentence and not know how it’s going to end.” Surprise can be subtle, but it keeps readers reading. “You never know where White is going with the sentence,” Jerry says. “Good sentences give off a little light, they are charged, they are alive. Start [ your manuscript] from the alive sentence, from the part that interests you.”.


Jerry also discusses the ‘two conflicting voices that coerce you or prevent you from writing.” It’s a paradox because the same voice that compels you to write , (this is great stuff, oh yeah, can’t wait to share this one) can also block you from writing, (This sucks. Nobody wants to read your work.)

His advice is to just write. And when that doesn’t work, go out and live. Then write about it.

The following are examples from Jerry Dennis’s work:

The first sentence of his book proposal of The Living Great Lakes:
“When fresh water becomes as precious as gold, the Great Lakes will be the mother lode.”

From his blog:
“Last week Glenn Wolff and I posed as poster children for an upcoming campaign by the Grand Traverse Conservation District to raise awareness about the beautiful and fragile Boardman River.”


To give you an idea of Jerry’s character, he calls his blog ‘Bountiful World’

http://www.jerrydennis.net/books.html


Me with Jerry Dennis at Antioch Writers' Workshop 2012





Happy Writing.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Les is More

“Keep the ceiling low enough you can keep your hat on. Don't let anyone else invade your head.” Les Edgerton, AWW 2012, on writer’s block

I love this guy. Not in the madly in love-will- elope-with- him sense. He’s already married, so that would be weird. But one of the highlights of the Antioch Writer’s Workshop was each morning in the lobby of the campus building, Les Edgerton held court. Laptop open, papers and books scattered around him, Les obviously had work to do, but he never let that impede a chance to bond with any conference participant or faculty who stopped by to chat. Even people like me who were not signed up for his afternoon workshop. He is saucy and edgy, so the surname Edgerton is no accident.

Les, a mystery writer, screenwriter, essayist and blogger, makes no apologies or excuses for his background: ex-con (I'm all cleaned up now and you can invite me into your home and don't have to count the silverware when I leave.), former hairdresser (Warren Beatty in Shampoo had nothing on me), twice divorced (third time is the charm), and non-stop smoker (No, you don’t look like you carry matches.) There is no shit about Les Edgerton.

If you read his blog, http://www.lesedgertononwriting.blogspot.com/
you will see his generous curiosity, and how he bonds with writers of all stripes. He is a treasure, and hopefully will be invited back to AWW. Even if you are not lucky enough to get in they limit the size, you can learn a lot by reading his book Hooked and listening to him in casual conversation.

A common thread I have found among most successful authors is their generosity, and Les is generous in spirit, time, and advice. In my many years of attending writers workshops and conferences, I have only come across two bestselling (herein unnamed) writers who were self absorbed and egomaniacal. Most authors are willing to pass the torch for mastering craft. Process and marketing work. Les not only made me laugh very day, he gave me a couple of agents’ names and said I should mention him in my queries, and he is also willing to give me a book jacket blurb when I find success with my own fiction. In his inscription, he wrote “I will be standing in line for you to autograph my copy of your book.”
I love you Les.

More gems from Les’s indomitable wisdom.
... Senility isn't when you forget to zip up your pants... it's when you forget to zip them down...

Advice for writers: There is no such thing as a synonym. There's just the perfect word. The perfect word doesn't come in groups.

If life hands you lemons... make lemonade. Then... try to find someone to whom life has handed vodka...

Never argue with an idiot. They'll drag you down to their level... and then beat you with experience.


Me with Les at AWW 2012. I am holding a copy of Hooked.
Happy Writing.