Author: Sandra E Williams

Mountain Writers Series

Turn Toward Me:
Writing Social Commentary in Poetry
A Workshop with Chrys Tobey
Thursdays, 6:00 - 9:00 PM
August 24, August 31, Sept 14, Sept 21
Multnomah Friends Meeting House - Portland

If writing is reciprocal, if other humans will read our work, how do we write social commentary in poetry that is not didactic, that does not turn off the reader? This generative writing workshop will explore the creative ways we can make readers turn toward our poems, our social commentary, our arguments. Through readings and plenty of writing prompts, we will find ways to encourage readers to be receptive to our work.
Meets: Thursdays, 6:00 - 9:00 PM, August 24, August 31, September 14 & September 21, 2017
Note: there is no class Thursday September 7
Cost: $200 (Four three-hour sessions)
Enrollment: Minimum 4, Maximum 12.
Location: Multnomah Friends Meeting House, 4312 SE Stark, Portland [street parking available]
Register securely online at http://www.mountainwriters.org/events/register.html

Chrys Tobey’s first poetry book, A Woman is a Woman is a Woman is a Woman, was published by Steel Toe Books in January 2017. Chrys co-curates the reading series, Women Writers Against Trump, with her sister poet Allison Tobey. Chrys has recently completed a reading tour that included Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Seattle. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and published in numerous literary journals, including Ploughshares, The Cincinnati Review, New Ohio Review, Rattle, Smartish Pace and the minnesota review. Chrys lives and teaches in Portland, Oregon.

Mountain Writers Series—
serving the literary community since 1973!

Reading
7:30 PM, Wednesday
October 5, 2011
23 Sandy Gallery
623 NE 23rd Avenue
Portland
Suggested Donation $5

To read the work of the Polish poet and Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska is to enter a miraculous world, a world where, as Billy Collins says, the poet’s acrobatic imagination leads us “into the intriguing and untranslatable realms that lie just beyond the boundaries of speech." In this course we’ll read and discuss Szymorska’s poems firstly for the many pleasures they give and secondly for what they might teach us about our own writing. Our text will be MAP: Collected and Last Poems (translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh). We’ll spend the first three classes discussing Szymborska’s work; the final class will be devoted to the poems participants write in response to or inspired by her work.
Reading as a Writer:
The Poetry of Wislawa Szymborska