In a time when phones can deliver a dozen rhyming couplets about “Making a Pancake in Syracuse” in milliseconds, what do we hope to do when we set out to write our own poems and stories? What makes our own writing feel organic or authentic?
This weekly workshop will focus on some of the ‘human advantages’ in poem- and story-making, namely:
Getting the granular, interesting details from our individual lives down on the page.
Discovering, within our poems or stories, how details from our lives can interact or intersect with our specific interests (other poems, people, stories, artwork, films, music, hobbies, etc.).
Our potential to make “task-free” imaginative leaps, breaks, or surprises in our writing.
Each session will involve a craft discussion, where we will look at specific examples from stories and poems that illustrate these advantages. The second part of each session will involve generating your own new work.
Open to writers at all levels, the goal of these four weeks will be to affirm (or re-affirm) that the joy of writing isn’t robotically fulfilling specific prompts, tasks, or assignments, but playing in the mud that is made when our real lives mix with the language. You’ll hopefully take home some new tools and some promising new drafts as you continue your own authentic, organic writing practice.
Instructor: Nick Thran
Tuesdays October 27 - November 17 | 7-8:30 p.m. | Community Arts Room
Cost: $140
Nick Thran’s books include the mixed-genre collection If It Gets Quiet Later On, I Will Make a Display (2023) and three previous collections of poems. Earworm (2011) won the 2012 Trillium Book Award for Poetry. His poems have been anthologized in Best Canadian Poetry and The Next Wave: An Anthology of 21st Century Canadian Poetry. Thran lives on unceded Wolastoqey territory (Fredericton, NB), where he works as an editor and bookseller.
Refund Policy: Any registrant who cancels their registration 10 or fewer days prior to the start date of the class/workshop will forfeit a $50 cancellation fee. The remainder of the registration cost will be refunded. No refunds will be issued once the program begins.