Cave Canem Workshops
MASTER CLASSES
UPCOMING
Poetry or Prose:
Rethinking the Poetic Line
A Master Class
with Toi Derricotte
Saturday, February 18, 2012
10 am - 1 pm
Cave Canem
20 Jay Street, Suite 310-A
Brooklyn, NY
In this master class, Toi Derricotte will guide participants through a consideration of poetry and prose, two genres that increasingly inflect one another and whose distinctions may be imaginatively challenged or repurposed, depending on the author’s intentions.
The class will begin with a brief reading by Ms. Derricotte, followed by a 30-minute craft talk. The remainder of the class will include in-class writing and critique of selections from participants' works-in-progress. Participants are asked to bring with them 11 copies of a work-in-progress and be prepared to read aloud from their work.
Cave Canem co-founder Toi Derricotte is the award-winning author of five collections of poetry, most recently The Undertaker's Daughter (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011) and Tender (1997), winner of the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize. Her The Black Notebooks, a literary memoir (W.W. Norton, 1997), won the 1998 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
“In Toi Derricotte's daring new collection, the idea of memoir forms the elegant scaffolding for poems that range from lyrical prose narratives to measured free-verse meditations. A courageous act of healing and redemption, The Undertaker's Daughter explores the nature of inheritance—its legacies of language and cruelty and sorrow—proving again that art is as much about beauty as it is about reckoning, empathy, and self-discovery.” —Natasha Trethewey
Registration Details
Program Fee: $125
Open enrollment; pre-paid advance registration required, January 2 - February 10, 2012. Minimum enrollment of six, maximum enrollment of ten. Registered participants may withdraw and receive a refund of $75 prior to February 10, 2012. Thereafter, registration fees are non-refundable. A waiting list will be developed.
Register Online
NEW YORK CITY
NEW YORK CITY WORKSHOPS
Since 1999, multiple-session workshops have been offered in New York City, providing emerging writers with opportunities to work with accomplished poets. Limited to an enrollment of 12-15, workshops offer rigorous instruction, careful critique and an introduction to the work of established poets—all within the supportive, safe environment that characterizes Cave Canem's week-long retreat. Typically, the final session is a public reading where participants showcase poems honed in the workshop. The program is offered tuition free.
UPCOMING
Spring 2012:
Writing across Cultures
with John Murillo
Mondays, 6-9 pm
March 19 - April 9; April 23 - May 14
Cave Canem Foundation
Brooklyn, NY
In this workshop the focus will not be on form as such, but content and worldview. Our objective is to read across cultures in order to enact a paradigm shift that may open up our own writing to new risks and realms. For our purposes, we will draw heavily from the philosophies and processes championed by the Spanish, Latin American, and Caribbean surrealists and magical realists writers of various genres. Though their signature blending of the magical with the mundane seems to have fallen out of fashion, this approach may have much to teach us, especially in writing the contemporary poem of witness. Workshops will consist of in-class writing assignments, craft discussions, and close readings of participants' work. The final session is a reading with participants, open to the public.
Deadline to Apply: February 15, 2012
Details & Applications Guidelines |
Apply Online
John Murillo is the author of the poetry collection, Up Jump the Boogie (Cypher, 2010), a finalist for both the 2011 Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the PEN Open Book Award and hailed by The Huffington Post as one of ÒTen Recent Books of Poetry You Should Read Right Now.Ó His other honors include a Pushcart Prize, two Larry Neal Writers Awards, and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Cave Canem Foundation, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, The New York Times, and the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing. He has taught at Cornell University, New York University, Columbia College Chicago, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Currently, he is visiting assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Miami.
POETRY CONVERSATIONS
Inaugurated in spring 2011, Poetry Conversations are open-enrollment workshops for poets of color at the beginning-to-intermediate stage of writing. Limited to an enrollment of 12, these sessions offer poets the chance to hone their craft and experiment with new ways of approaching the page. The final session is a reading by participants, open to the public.
UPCOMING
Spring 2012:
Poetry Conversations with Kamilah Aisha Moon
Wednesdays, 6-8:30 pm
February 22, march 4 - April 18
Cave Canem Foundation
Brooklyn, NY
Deadline to Apply: February 1, 2012
Details & Applicaiton Guidelines | Apply Online
PITTSBURGH
Cave Canem Open Enrollment Workshops
In spring and fall 2011, Cave Canem will offer two eight-session open enrollment poetry workshops at The Hill House Association Center in Pittsburgh, PA, for African American poets at the early-to-intermediate stage of their writing enterprises. Partcipants will attend seven facilitated workshopping sessions; the eighth and final session is a public reading by participants.
This workshop is made possible by funding from the Gertrude E. Paff Memorial Fund, the John B. Sloan Endowment, the James F. and Ellen C. Pitcairn Fund, and the Aims C. and Betty Lee Coney Memorial Fund of The Pittsburgh Foundation.
GUIDELINES
Eligible applicants are adult African Americans at the early-to-intermediate stage of their writing endeavors who are not enrolled full-time in a degree-granting program. Cave Canem fellows are not eligible to apply. Individuals must commit to attending all eight sessions.
RECENT
Instructor: Yona Harvey
Workshops: Tuesday Evenings, 6-8:30 pm
October 11 - November 29
The Hill House Center
Pittsburgh, PA
Deadline to Enroll: September 30, 2011
Full Details & Application Guidelines | Apply Online