SPECIAL SATURDAY WORKSHOP!

We will discuss poems and write drafts of poems inspired by subjects that do not fall within the confines of traditional genres of visual art, stretching the boundaries of influences and approaches commonly employed in ekphrasis. Art is everywhere: in the bark patterns of sycamore and poplar trees, in peeling hydrangea limbs, in striations of sandstone, in water hyacinth clumps trapped in the heel of a slough, in the broom-teeth of hericium mushrooms spiking from a blowdown, in the gently sloping lateral line of a Spanish mackerel drifting through the baby-shit yellow spots to its forked tail, in the deckled pages and worn spine of a book, in the rusty-hairball carpet stain, in the overlapping residue that has built up over years from different bars of soap in the nook of a tub. We can also look to images that are overtly commodified like the types of images that provoked sociopolitical and economic concerns with Pop artists—for instance, billboards, signage, cover art on food boxes, candy wrappers, small appliance instructions, commercial iconography and insignias. Or you could look at legal documents or national or state symbols: passport or immigration papers, an old driver’s license, a state seal, a state flag. We can look at stamps, patches, a cast with scribbles on it, street art, biker-gang leathers, tattoos, a body scar, a stain on a Celotex ceiling tile, a flaw in a pattern on a salad plate, a still shot from a movie, a graphic novel or comic pane. I will provide prompts and the influences for the drafts you will compose, allowing you to write from a true state of the uncomfortable unknown, which is the best place to be when starting a poem draft.

WORKSHOP RATES:
ESWA Members: $40; Non-members: $60
ESWA members must be logged in to the website to receive the member discount.
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ADAM VINES is Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is the author of five poetry collections—the latest, Lures (LSU P, 2022), and his poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Kenyon Review, and Poetry, among others. He is Editor in Chief of Birmingham Poetry Review, which celebrates its 50th issue this year. BPR received AWP’s 2020 Small Press Publisher Award, and poems from BPR are reprinted regularly on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily and appeared in the Best American Poetry anthology in 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2023 and in the Pushcart anthology in 2020.