Transforming the Everyday: An Online Poetry Workshop Series
with Carol V. Davis
Feb. 5, 12, 19 - On Zoom, 7-8:30pm EST, 4-5:30 PST
Feb. 28 - Hybrid (on Zoom and In Person at the Roethke House in Saginaw), 12-3:30pm EST, 9-12:30 PST.
Using exercises and examples to stimulate the imagination, this workshop focuses on writing. We will explore how to transform the ordinary elements of what's around us (memories, observation, the external world) into linguistically alive and exciting to read poetry. Each meeting is divided into three sections: reading and discussing examples of contemporary poetry on the themes, writing and workshopping what we have written.
Please scroll down for complete workshop schedule.
About Carol V. Davis
Carol V. Davis is the author of Hovering (Tofu Ink Arts Press, 2026), Below Zero (Stephen F. Austin Univ. Press, 2023), Because I Cannot Leave This Body (Truman State Univ. Press, 2017) and Between Storms (TSUP, 2012). She won the 2007 T.S. Eliot Prize for Into the Arms of Pushkin: Poems of St. Petersburg. Her first book, It’s Time to Talk About…, was published in a bilingual English/Russian edition, (Symposium, Russia, 1997). Her poetry has been read on National Public Radio, the US Library of Congress and Radio Russia. Formerly Poetry Editor of the Los Angeles newspaper, The Jewish Journal, she was the 2008 Poet-in-Residence at Olivet College, MI, and teaches at Santa Monica College and Antioch University, both in California. She was a senior Fulbright scholar in Russia, 1996-97 and 2005. She taught in Siberia, most recently in winter 2018 and was awarded a Fulbright Specialist grant for Siberia in 2020, postponed due to Covid, and then canceled. Her poetry is in The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry and Poetry Goes to the Movies, among others. Her work has been translated into German and Russian. She has also published translations from Russian. Read more about her work here, https://www.carolvdavis.com.
Schedule:
Memory: How do we transform memory into poetry? What makes it universal? Is that important? Does a poem need to be faithful to a memory?
February 5, Thursday, 7pm EST/ 4pm PST
Meet via Zoom
Observation (Ekphrastic): What details are interesting? How do you lift description from the literal to the metaphoric? Is everything worthy of using in a poem? Writing Ekphrastic poems.
February 12, Thursday, 7pm EST/ 4pm PST
Meet via Zoom
Using the every day: Occasions, letters, school lessons, games, nursery rhymes and fairytales.
February 19, Thursday, 7pm EST/ 4pm PST
Meet via Zoom
Craft & Editing followed by group reading: What stays and what goes. How do you make choices in editing?
February 28, Saturday, 12pm EST/ 9am PST
Meet live at the Roethke House for the workshop with Carol. If you’re not local, log in and participate via Zoom. Lunch will be provided for on-site participants.
The reading will begin at 2:00 EST/ 11am PST after the workshop. Participants are invited to share a piece written during the first 3 wk. workshop