Saturday, November 9, 2:00–6:00pm
Sunday, November 10, 10:00am–2:00pm
Application deadline: Friday, October 25

Saturday, October 12, 2:00–6:00pm
Sunday, October 13, 12:00–4:00pm
Application deadline: Friday, October 4

Writers from Petrarch to Millay, from Shakespeare to Frost to Hacker have written sonnets about love, loss, philosophy, sex, war, aging, and every other human concern. This is a workshop for anyone who wants to learn about, or refresh his or her knowledge of, one of the most enduring and flexible poetic forms. The class will cover the essentials of meter and rhyme, and read and discuss sonnets from their inception up through present-day practice and experimentation.

Regardless of stylistic differences, Bashō, John Keats, Pablo Neruda, Li Po, William Carlos Williams, Emily Dickinson, and Kay Ryan would all agree on the essential importance of imagery--the poem's power of conveying what the real world looks and feels like as a way of both renewing our experience of the world and getting at the otherwise unsayable.

Emily Dickinson famously said that she knew it was a poem if it knocked the top of her head off. But what if it’s a prose poem? Can something that looks like prose but sounds like poetry have the same impact? The prose poem allows the writer to preserve a poetic diction and proximity to metaphor while stretching out the line and taking on a more direct narrative. It can also achieve a “snapshot” quality, which makes it a form as adventurous in brevity – what’s in focus? what’s lurking half out of sight? – as the essay can be in breadth.

Friday, October 18, 5:00-7:30pm
Saturday, October 19, 10:00am-5:00pm
Sunday, October 20, 10:00am-5:00pm

with Ana Božičević, Nicole Cooley, Jan Freeman, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Kimiko Hahn, Patricia Spears Jones, Rowena Kennedy-Epstein, Christoph Keller, Joan Larkin, Jan Heller Levi, Anne Marie Macari, Donna Masini, Jena Osman, Alicia Ostriker, William L. Rukeyser and Gerald Stern

The 11^th century trobadors and trobairitz of Occitania, a region encompassing parts of southern France, Italy's Occitan Valleys, Monaco, and Catalonia's Val d'Aran, have long inspired American poets most notably Ezra Pound, with their lyrical, secular, and often subversive verse-commentary on the culture, politics, and love affairs of their time. Mythologized as wandering mystics, these professional poets set the stage for everything from forms like the cantata and sestina to Top 40 love songs.

Mei-mei Berssenbrugge was described by poet Jackson Mac Low as “neither objectivist nor subjectivist but a poet of the whole consciousness.” Born in Beijing, she emerges from diverse influences, from the artistic scene of her rural New Mexico home to the New York School and Language poets. Her over a dozen books of poetry include artistic collaborations with her husband Richard Tuttle and visual artist Kiki Smith. Berssenbrugge is joined by University of California Berkeley scholar Charles Altieri.