In his famous early poem, “Digging,” Seamus Heaney says that to write poems he’ll “dig,” as a farmer does, in the earth of life and language with a pen. In this workshop we’ll work on two levels. Where are the roots of the poem? What’s underneath what we can see of the poem in its current version? We’ll work with the earth and water that a poem is made of–language, craft, memory, feeling, thought, experience, awareness. And also: how does line-by-line craft produce the poem’s structure? For each poet we’ll work together in a process of discovery, and we’ll also see that the structure of a poem is in how and where it moves. Bring three poems with you (from 12 to 20 lines each; copies for everyone) and also send them to me at least two weeks before the Festival.
Save the dates! January 20-25, 2020 in Delray Beach. Complete details coming soon!
Born and raised in Houston, Reginald Gibbons earned his BA in Spanish and Portuguese from Princeton University, and both his MA in English and creative writing and his PhD in comparative literature from Stanford University. Gibbons is the author of Last Lake (University of Chicago Press, 2016), Slow Trains Overhead: Chicago Poems and Stories (University of Chicago Press, 2010), and Creatures of a Day: Poems (LSU Press, 2008). He is the Frances Hooper Professor of Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University and lives in Evanston, Illinois.
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