Remote Session (OCWW is remote only through Dec. 2020)
Contemporary poets implore us to trust our patience in an age of bite-sized headlines. In this workshop, we will explore how the nuances, forms, and structures of long poems as meditations and investigations by writers such as Larry Levis, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Robert Hayden, Anne Carson, John Murillo, and C.D. Wright, among others sustain our attention in an ebb and flow of information, storytelling, and lyric imagery. We will grapple with ideas of economy, memory, and narrative arcs as we comb through the major tenets of the contemporary poem of length and its necessity in this era of ever-increasing brevity. This is a flexible workshop in which students writing from multiple skill levels and multiple genres will choose to generate new material or revise previously written materials. Please come with a blank page and/or a draft in need of revision.
Bio: Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is a poet, essayist, translator and immigration advocate. He is the author of the collection Cenzontle (2018), which won the 2017 A. Poulin Jr. prize, and the chapbook Dulce (2018). His memoir, Children of the Land (2020), is his most recent publication. His work has appeared or been featured in The New York Times, PBS Newshour, People Magazine, en Espanol, the Paris Review, Fusion, TV, Buzzfeed, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, New England Review, and Indiana Review, among others. He currently teaches in the Low-Res MFA Program at Ashland University.
We offer free student memberships at a discounted rate of $5.00 per session. You must send verification of your student status. Please contact Claudia Katz at ckatz17755@aol.com for details.
9:00-9:30 Socializing
9:30-12:00 Program
