Enjoy themed discussions, workshops and exercises designed to help enhance and inform the way that you look at the poetry that you read and write. Limited attendance guarantees special attention to your own particular poetry questions and interests. Daily lectures are complimented by great meals, evening poetry and musical performances, open readings, and plenty of time for personal recreation.
Session 1: April 3-6
Poetry
as Resilience
Taha Muhammed Ali, Peter Cole, Carolyn Forche and
Marjory Wentworth (South Carolina Poet Laureate)
Session 2: April 10-13
Poetry,
Silence and Gesture: Working with poetry, dance and
painting with Li-Young
Lee, Fran Quinn and Ann Igoe
Session 3: April 17-20
Journey
from the Center to the
Page with Jeff Davis
and Authentic
Voice, Authentic
Truth
with Jen Lighty
Session 4: April 24-27
The
Culture of Wildness
with John deKadt, Jay
Leeming, Martin Shaw, Jen Lighty and the Frantzich
Brothers
Session 5: April 27-30
Poetry,
Music and
Memoir
with Myra Shapiro
and
To
See the World in a Grain of
Sand
with Norman Minnick; music
and drumming with John deKadt and the Frantzich
Brothers
Session 6: May 1-4
The
World as We See It
with Mary Oliver, Coleman Barks, Gordon Bok, Richard
Tillinghast, Valzhyna Mort, Carol Casey and more!
Session Descriptions
Session 1: Poetry as Resilience
Palestinian poet Taha
Muhammed Ali
joins US poets Carolyn
Forche and Peter
Cole (2007 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship) along
with South Carolina Poet Laureate Marjory
Wentworth as we explore poetry as a means for achieving
social change and maintaining and improving human rights for
people of all nations. Weíll look at the power of
language to both create and eradicate boundaries, and
explore how poetry can be a positive force for change in
this world.
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Session 2: Poetry, Silence and Gesture: Working with poetry, dance and painting
An intense interactive series of workshops exploring the
importance of gesture in three different mediums with
Li-Young
Lee, Fran
Quinn and Ann Igoe designed to lead painters to the
canvas and poets to the page.
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Session 3a: Journey from the Center to the Page
Yogi and author Jeff Davis returns for a fourth year to
gently lead us into the depths of our souls, awakening us to
the wonder of the world around us.
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Session 3b:
Authentic Voice, Authentic Truth
Jen Lighty's workshops will focus on
the voice as the center of personal and universal truth. She
will use a variety of methods to open the voice, as well as
addressing the fears which stop us from accessing our
truths.
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Session 4: The Culture of Wildness
For thousands of years men and women have sought a direct and vitalising relationship with wildness. Two roads towards this have been through wilderness and ancient myth. Join Martin Shaw and Jennifer Lighty as they explore folk lore, rites-of-passage and the poetic imagination as tools to living a life that has vigour, humour and passion.
Two myths, Russian and Siberian, form a backbone for the weekend. 'Valemon and the Wild Third Daughter' and 'Ivan the Bear's Son' are two deep initiatory stories, one with a female at it's center, the other male. Both stories deal with the unexpected turns, hard knocks and glowing dawns we experience in the voyage of our lives.
Wrapped around this movement into story will be the opportunity to spend alone time in the natural world. With Martin's experience as a wilderness rites-of-passage guide, and Jennifer's snuffling and instinctive knowledge of the island, you are in safe hands to step deeper into the experential face of wildness.
We will be enjoying what the ancient Celts called the 'Bardic imagination' something that can be traced through the Grail stories, the poetry of Persia, and up to the work of Emily Dickinson and Gary Snyder. There will also be the chance to write in the wild this weekend-either to be spoke aloud or kept silent-the choice is yours.
The evenings will invoke something of a nomadic spirit-gypsy poems from Eastern Europe, drumming from Africa and Ireland, dark gospel, strange folktales from Scottish firesides and the opportunity to enchant, beguile, and enthrall us yourself!
The aim of the weekend is to leave with a hunters bag of
tools for the journey ahead-what Shaw calls "the bow, blade
and courting flute." Expect challenge, fierce encouragement
and high adventure! Our work will be enhanced by the songs
and drums of Tim and Paul Frantzich and poetry workshops
with Jay Leeming.
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Session 5a: Poetry, Music and Memoir
Beloved teacher Myra
Shapiro,
author of Four Sublets: Becoming a Poet in New York, will
host a workshop on exploring one's own life as a work of
art.
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Session 5b: To See the World in a Grain of Sand
Norm Minnick, author of To Taste the Water, the 2007 winner of the Mid-List Press First Series Award for Poetry, in a workshop entitled "To See the World in a Grain of Sand" will explore the concept of verticality in poetry.
In a time of increased flatness in our culture, we are
desperate for art that is alive and wild, but at the same
time provides us something to hold on to. By paying
attention to vertical energies, sensation and intuition or
imagination, in addition to the polar adjectives of the
horizontal, the rational and the emotional, we will begin to
transform that flatness into depth so as to open ourselves
to a more soulful, more spiritual impulse. We will examine
the sensuous world around us as well as our own unique
experiences. With help from William Blake and Emily
Dickinson we will focus on these vertical energies in order
to allow the depths to open, in attempt "to see a World in a
Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower.
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Session 6: The World as We See It
This final session of our fifth year had to be perfect,
so we worked hard on this one. We will bring together three
of the most ecstatic voices of our time Mary
Oliver, Coleman
Barks and Gordon
Bok -- to headline a weekend culminating the 5th year of
the authentic, auspicious Block Island Poetry Project. Our
magi will be joined by an accoutrement of teachers including
longtime BIPP favorite Richard
Tillinghast, Belarusean powerhouse poet Valzyhna
Mort, visionary astrologer Caroline
Casey and Block Island's own high priestess and earth
activist Jen Lighty.
The weekend will be a celebration of the spoken word as many
a splendid thing. We will enjoy whole group assemblies,
readings by our featured poets and musicians, and small
group interactive workshops (in poetry, astrology,
dance/movement, visionary activism). Coleman and Mary will
meet for a discussion of their craft and each will give a
reading. Gordon will perform Friday night and conduct a
workshop on moving poetry toward song Weekend limited to 100
participants and the workshop is half-filled. Rooms are
going fast, too, so if you're interested, all
aboard…Call Lisa Starr at 401-466-9916 or email
for more information. Cost for the
weekend is $285 (room and meals not included.)
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