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 GREENSBORO, NC--The Network will host its annual Spring Conference at the campus of the University of North Carolina-Greensboro on April 28. Poets can attend two half-day workshops: "The Persona Poem" with Janice Fuller and "Showing AND Telling" with Rebecca Black.
Here are the course descriptions:
The Persona Poem with Janice Moore Fuller
In his poem “Ars Poetica,” Czeslaw Milosz proclaims, “The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person, / for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, / and invisible guests come in and out at will.” This workshop will explore the reasons writers turn to persona poems and the creative value of this experience. The persona (or mask) poem is a first-person poem in which the poet assumes the voice of an object or person. The workshop will begin with a reading of some canonical and contemporary models of the persona poem in order to consider which qualities make the poems successful. The session will also include tips for how to invite “invisible guests” into our poems.
Showing AND Telling (poetry) with Rebecca Black
“Show, don't tell,” is the first rule of writing well—you've heard that often enough. However, good poems can arise from the right mixture of scenes, images, and striking moments when the writer speaks his or her mind with clarity and boldness. During this workshop, we’ll explore poems that delight in exploiting the delicate balance between showing and telling. As the session progresses, we’ll try drafting our own poems by imitating a few model poems by Louise Gluck, Elizabeth Bishop, Billy Collins, and other masters, using simple, timed writing exercises to generate new work. Students will leave with a sense of accomplishment, knowledge of some excellent model poems, and a new poem draft.
Janice Moore Fuller has published three poetry books—Archeology Is a Destructive Science, Sex Education, and Séance, winner of the Poetry Council of North Carolina’s Oscar Arnold Young Award (for North Carolina poetry book of the year). Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, and her plays and libretti have been produced at many festivals and theatres. A Fellow at artist colonies in Ireland, Scotland, Spain, and Portugal, she is Writer-in-Residence and Professor of English at Catawba College.
 In 2011,Rebecca Black was a Fulbright fellow at the Seamus Heaney Center for Poetry in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Her first book, Cottonlandia (2004), won a Juniper Prize. A former Wallace Stegner and National Endowment for the Arts fellow, she is an assistant professor at UNC- Greensboro; she and her family divide their time between San Francisco and North Carolina. She is at work on a second manuscript, Presidio.
Full faculty bios can be viewed on the conference webpage. The 2012 Spring Conference also offers workshops in nonfiction, poetry, children's publishing, and tutorials for authors. Registration is available online or by calling 336-293-8844.
The nonprofit North Carolina Writers’ Network is the state’s oldest and largest literary arts services organization devoted to writers at all stages of development.
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