Sunday, April 19th, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. San Francisco
$55 members/$65 non-members
This mini-workshop may well whet your appetite for more, in which case you may want to consider Julie Bruck’s 9-week “Fearless Poetry Workshop” on Thursday evenings in SF, or Alison Luterman’s “Magpie Poetry Workshop,” also on Thursday evenings, but in Berkeley.
Robert Frost famously wrote “a poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.” After you’ve drafted a poem, how do you find the true beginning–the place where the delight begins? And how do you know when you’ve followed the poem to a wise ending? In this workshop, we’ll examine a generous mix of how other poets have chosen beginnings and endings for their poems. Then we’ll look at (and listen to) our own drafts, focusing on identifying the emotional starting point for the poem and how to craft an ending that enlarges the poem’s intention without sacrificing authenticity. You’ll need a draft of a poem that you’ve been working on and a willingness to listen to your work and the work of others with an open mind.
Elizabeth Perry is a poet and physician whose poems have been published in Ploughshares, Pool, Margie, and Harpur Palate. She graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1992 and from Dartmouth Medical School in 1999. Her first book, Night Work, was published in January 2009 by Sarabande Books. She believes that poetry can be life-saving and that writing poems takes endurance and encouragement. She loves being surprised by people, which is why she enjoys being a doctor and teaching writing.