Conversations and Connections Pittsburgh 2022

All writers have their habits and obsessions: those subjects, forms, and—especially—genres we circle back to again and again. Breaking out of those habits from time to time can be an opportunity to find new joy and energy in your writing practice. In this craft talk, I will share how teaching creative writing to (often reluctant) high school students pushed me to learn to write in genres outside my poetry background, rediscover play and low-stakes creativity, and hone the craft of my poems in unexpected ways. We will write—and draw—using specific prompts and exercises from my classes that I found fruitful in my own writing practice and discuss the ways that writing exercises that feel impossibly far from our wheelhouses can push us to see something new or find new modes of expression.  

Western myths--Greek, Roman, Biblical, etc.---are so ubiquitous in literature that a poet may reasonably assume the audience's foreknowledge and thus take liberties in their symbolism without the burden of context. This generative workshop will tackle weaving myths into poetry that may be lesser known to an English-speaking audience: how to widen and flip a narrative until it becomes your own creation, and whether context is necessary or simply an ethnocentric expectation.