with Partridge Boswell
Thursdays, 6pm – 8pm (3 sessions)
May 11th and 25th and June 8th
Location: The Yellow Door, 3625 Rue Aylmer, Tiohtià:ke / Montreal
Recommended for poets age 15 & up.
REGISTER HERE or Call Chloe at Yellow Door: (514) 845-2600 ext.3
Registration is free. Workshop discussions will take place in English primarily, but French poets are welcome as well.
Les ateliers sont gratuits. Les discussions se dérouleront principalement en anglais, mais les poètes qui écrivent en français et en anglais sont les bienvenus.
Workshop description:
(la version française est ci-dessous)
Echoing writers from Emerson to Hemingway to Nin, Leonard Cohen famously sings in his song “Anthem”: There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. For poets, this reminder of our brokenness is invaluable to how we see and receive the world. Our brokenness is our openness—a mantra worth repeating, though we seldomer hear its implied corollary: cracks are also how our light gets out. That openness goes both ways. Without the cracks of our brokenness, the light of creative expression would stay dark and silent inside us.
In this workshop we will explore the musical light of our poems and ways in which poetry that embraces our brokenness breaks our own silences. “Every poem breaks a silence that had to be overcome” writes Adrienne Rich. In this three-session, month-long journey we will peck and pick, dowse and dig, delving deeply into our creative cores for the musical language that needs to be voiced, receiving and shining our individual lights.
Sharing our poems-in-progress, we will break bread with each other as we explore new methods of self-discovery—ways in which we can break our own silences. Through generative free-writing and revision, we’ll read and respond to threshold poems as we go, touching upon elements such as metaphor, music, syntax, form and descriptive imagery. Poets of all ages (15+) and states of emergence are encouraged to please join us at the Yellow Door for this mutually supportive, engaging and nourishing journey.
L’art de briser
Dans cet atelier, nous explorerons la puissance musicale de nos poèmes et la façon dont la poésie qui accueille nos fragilités brise nos silences. « Chaque poème brise un silence qu’il fallait surmonter », écrit Adrienne Rich. Au cours de ce voyage de trois sessions, nous allons creuser profondément dans nos cœurs créatifs pour les voix musicales qui nécessitent d’être exprimées, en recevant et en faisant briller nos lumières individuelles.
En partageant nos poèmes en cours, nous collaborerons les uns avec les autres en explorant de nouvelles méthodes de découverte de soi – des façons dont nous pouvons briser nos propres silences. Grâce à l’écriture libre générative et à la révision, nous lisons et répondrons aux poèmes au fur et à mesure, en touchant à des éléments tels que la métaphore, la musique, la syntaxe, la forme et l’imagerie descriptive. Les poètes de tous âges (15 ans et plus) et de tous les états d’émergence sont encouragés à se joindre à nous à la Porte Jaune pour ce projet de soutien mutuel, engageant et nourrissant.
Les discussions se dérouleront principalement en anglais, mais les poètes qui écrivent en français et en anglais sont les bienvenus.
About the Facilitator: Author of the Grolier Poetry Prize-winning collection Some Far Country, Partridge Boswell is co-founder of Bookstock Literary Festival and facilitates Poetry for Our Future! workshops at Vallum Society for Education in Arts & Letters in Montreal. He lives with his family in Vermont and troubadours widely with the poetry/music group Los Lorcas. His Saguaro Poetry Prize-winning chapbook Not Yet a Jedi is forthcoming in spring 2023.