Join us on Sunday, May 19, 2024 at 2:00pm Central for a generative workshop with featured poet Geffrey Davis.
Lost & Found Poems: The Art of Writing Discovery
During this workshop, we will explore poems that offer some compelling arguments for inviting a certain loss of control into our writing. We will talk philosophically at times, looking to work that confronts thematic realities of grief and our potential to lose things like hope. We will also talk formally at times, looking to work that gets itself lost via sound, image, structure, and syntax. Taking several cues from Solnit, we will apply a working curiosity about lostness to poems that seem to aspire to “being at home in the unknown, so that being in its midst isn’t cause for panic or suffering, of being at home with being lost.” The hope is that each participant leaves feeling inspired to write toward the kinds of discovery that can occur when they claim and hone their own art of losing.
ACCESS NOTES: The reading will take place virtually via Zoom with Zoom and Otter.ai auto captions. An ASL interpreter will be present. Access copies of poems will be made available via Google Docs. Our Access Statement will be read before we begin.
Recommended for attendees 16 years and above.
FEATURED POET:
Geffrey Davis’s third book of poems, One Wild Word Away, was published by BOA Editions in April 2024. His second collection, Night Angler, won the James Laughlin Award; and his debut, Revising the Storm, received the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. A recipient of the Anne Halley Poetry Prize, the Porter Fund Literary Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and the Wabash Prize for Poetry, Davis has also been awarded fellowships from Bread Loaf, Cave Canem, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Whiting Foundation for his involvement with The Prison Story Project, which strives to empower incarcerated women and men to tell their own stories through writing. He currently lives in the Ozarks, where he teaches for the University of Arkansas. Raised by the Pacific Northwest, Davis also serves as core faculty for The Rainier Writing Workshop and as Poetry Editor for Iron Horse Literary Review.
EVENT HEADER IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
Photo of the featured reader outlined with a white line and displayed over a light blue background. Beneath the photo are the words “Open Mouth Presents: A Workshop with Geffrey Davis.” Availability of sign language interpretation is indicated by the presence of an icon showing two hands signing in the bottom left corner.
Photo: The poet Geffrey Davis visible from the chest up, with trees visible in the background. He wears glasses while making direct eye contact with the camera. He has on a light jacket over a polo shirt; his hair is black, short, and curly; and he has facial hair.
SPONSORS: Support for Open Mouth Literary Center is provided, in part, by the Arkansas Arts Council, an agency of the Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage, and Tourism, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support comes from our supporters on Patreon.