Saturday, Feb. 2: 10 am to 4 pm
$95 members/$110 others Berkeley
For experienced and beginning poets alike, it is easy to fall into familiar ruts in style, content and form. Sometimes the search for a “voice” or “style” creates a stale veneer that masks a truer, more vibrant voice. And it’s not always easy to figure out what to do about it.
“I think what we call a ‘comfort zone’ is really a set of patterns that we find easy to stick with due to habit or limited experience,” says David Rosenthal, “but sometimes even the smallest sideways movement can open up whole new directions we’d never considered before.”
In this workshop, David will lead you through conversation, specific exercises, experiments and “tricks” designed to free you from your “comfort zone” to encourage broader, deeper explorations of style, form, content and imagery. You’ll talk about how to apply the results of these explorations to your poems-in-progress. You can also use them to generate fresh ideas and fight off writing blocks.
David Rosenthal has taught students at every level from kindergarten to adults of all ages. His poems have appeared in dozens of print and online journals including Measure, Blue Unicorn, Soundzine, Modern Haiku, The Flea and The Chimaera. He has been a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award finalist, and a semi-finalist for both the Richard Wilbur Poetry Award and the Donald Justice Poetry Prize. He lives in Berkeley with his wife and two daughters and teaches kindergarten and first grade in the Oakland public schools.