MODEL BEHAVIOR: Poem as Instigator
With Larry Dean

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and for poets who sometimes face writer's block or just want to broaden their horizons, it may also be the key to creating new and unique works quite different from built-in expectations. Poets—even those who are prolific—tend to write what they know, either because that's what they've been taught to do, or because familiar routines often make for familiar work. We will look at poems by established poets, read and discuss them, then write poems on themes or ideas suggested by works examined. We will also have a chance to share what's been written with the whole group.
Larry O. Dean was born and raised in Flint, Michigan. As a young man, he worked with Academy Award-winning filmmaker, Michael Moore, was widely published in the alternative press, and also worked as a cartoonist. He attended the University of Michigan at Flint and Ann Arbor, during which time he won three Hopwood Awards in Creative Writing, an honor shared with fellow writers Robert Hayden, Jane Kenyon, Frank O'Hara, Arthur Miller, John Ciardi, and Mary Gaitskill, among others. In addition to writing, he is a singer and songwriter, working both solo as well as with several 'hard pop' bands. He has released numerous critically-acclaimed CD's, including Throw the Lions to the Christians (1997) and Sir Slob (2001); Public Displays of Affection (1998) and Fables in Slang (2001), with Post Office; Gentrification Is Theft (2002), with The Me Decade; and Fun with a Purpose (forthcoming, 2009), with The Injured Parties. He also hosts a monthly songwriter showcase, Folk You!, now in its seventh year. He is author of books, Rate of Exchange & Other Poems (1988); Barking Up the Wrong Tree (1989); QWERTYUIOP (1989); Eyes, Ears, Nose & Throat (1990); Workers' Comp. (1995); Identity Theft for Dummies (2003); and I Am Spam (2004), a series of poems 'inspired' by spam email. He is currently working on a new collection, Brief Nudity, as well as a 'best of' edition including poems from out-of-print works. Selected magazine publications include The Berkeley Poetry Review, Gryphon, Passages North, Third Lung Review, The Altered Mind, Lilliput Review, Amaranth Review, Kumquat Meringue, California Quarterly, The Monona Review, Whoreson Dog, Pacific Coast Journal, Tomorrow, Poetry at the 33 Review, Work, Strong Coffee, Maelstrom, Clark Street Review, Red Rock Review, Big Bridge, Pigeon, The Banana King, Sliced Bread, Old City Cool, Keyhole, OCHO, and Black Creek Review. His work has also been widely anthologized. Larry was a 2004 recipient of the Hands on Stanzas Gwendolyn Brooks Award, presented by the Poetry Center of Chicago. After living in San Francisco for over a decade, he makes his home in Chicago. Contact him at larryodean.com

MAKE GOOD WRITING GREAT--6-Steps to Real Success with Fiction or Creative Non-Fiction
With John Lehman

Whether you're new at writing or a published professional, interested in fiction or non-fiction, John Lehman's innovative, 6-step method will start you well on the way to producing the kinds of stories, articles and books you love to read. You'll learn how to take greater risks by probing the conflict beneath the surface and how to incorporate techniques from acting and film editing into the process of writing in order to achieve a heightened reality and dramatically increase reader involvement. One former participant stated, "It's a whole new approach to writing. After years of being dissatisfied with my work, I'm now back at it and feeling a new kind of power in what I produce."
John Lehman is the founder and original publisher of Rosebud, poetry editor of the Wisconsin Academy Review as well as managing partner of Zelda Wilde Publishing. He has presented writing seminars in dozens of cities throughout the country. John's latest books include America’s Greatest Unknown Poet: Lorine Niedecker, Everything is Changing, Shorts: 101 Brief Poems of Wonder and Surprise and Acting Lessons. In 2001 he was given the Council for Wisconsin Writers top award for outstanding encouragement of Wisconsin writers. In both 2004 and 2008 he was selected as one of the finalists for the Wisconsin poet laureate position. His plays: A Brief History of My Tattoo, The Jane Test and The Writer's Cave have been presented in Milwaukee and Madison. John is a graduate of Notre Dame University and has a Masters Degree from the University of Michigan. He grew up in Chicago but now lives with his wife, Talia Schorr, and their four dogs and five cats in Rockdale, the smallest incorporated village in Wisconsin.

POETRY AS PEACE MAKER
With Ellen Kort

"If you see the shadow of peace
make sure you touch it." -Bryn Kass

Poetry embraces peace from many perspectives -- poems that are peace-filled with the wonder and hope of everyday life, that are rooted in our relationships to one another. Poems that express our woundedness and loss, our joy and longing for peace and healing. This workshop is for anyone who wants to experiment and play with language, activate the inner writer, and explore ways of becoming clearly and intimately in touch with the self and the surrounding world. We'll create new poems through conversation and helpful prompts, and we'll learn from one another in a relaxed, supportive atmosphere. Bring an open and adventurous heart, a notebook and your favorite writing pen.

ELLEN KORT served four years as Wisconsin's first Poet Laureate and has traveled throughout the US, New Zealand, Australia, and Japan, offering poetry workshops and readings. She has authored 14 books, has been featured in a wide variety of journals and anthologies, and has received several literary awards. Her poems have been architecturally incorporated in buildings throughout Wisconsin and Minnesota and included in the Hospice Poetry Recording Project of Seattle. Ellen believes poetry is a "healing art" and facilitates poetry workshops at medical conventions for physicians and psychologists. Her poem, "Light," has been put to music by Philadelphia composer, Jennifer Higdon, and performed at the Weidner Center by the Green Bay Symphony.

HONEY, I DIDN’T SHRINK THE POEMS…
With Christine Swanberg

What if we took an expansive approach to poetry writing and revision rather than a reductive approach? Would it be possible to open up our poems and let them do things we may not have imagined or allowed them to do before? Let’s examine what a poem can do simultaneously: create a short narrative, invent original phrases, construct sparkling juxtapositions, lead to epiphany, probe psychological depth, sculpt elegant stanzas with “music” within them…Bring a couple of poems that seem in need of invigoration, and we’ll talk about strategies to accomplish that. Be open to experimentation as we revise and create new work, enlarging the scope of the poem rather than paring it down. We’ll look at some virtuoso poems for inspiration to set the scene for enlargement rather than confinement of your work. You will have time to create new work as well. Then we will affirm and discuss the work generated through this expansive lens.
Christine Swanberg has published several books of poetry: Tonight On This Late Road (Erie St., 1984), Invisible String (Erie St., 1990), Bread Upon the Waters (UW-Whitewater, 1990), Slow Miracle (Lake Shore, 1992), The Tenderness of Memory (Plainview Press, 1995), The Red Lacquer Room (Chiron Press, 2001). Her work appears in anthologies such as Knowing Stones: Poems Of Exotic Travel, I Am Becoming The Woman I’ve Wanted, Jane’s Stories, Key West: An Anthology, Pride And Joy, and Still Going Strong .Her newest book, Who Walks Among The Trees With Charity, is now available from Wind Publications (Nicolas, KY). Her poems appear in journals such as The Beloit Poetry Journal, Spoon River Quarterly, Amelia, Chiron, Kansas Quarterly, Creative Woman, Earth’s Daughters, Mid-America Review, Powhatan Review, Midnight Mind, Sow’s Ear, Wind, Plainsongs, The Louisville Review, clark Street Review, Wisconsin Review, Prairie Winds, Out of Line, and others. Awards include a featured reading at Seattle’s Frye Museum through PoetsWest, first and second place in Peninsula Pulse, first place in Midwest Poetry Review, second place in Nit and Wit, the YWCA Leader Luncheon Award for the Arts, and the Womanspirit Award from Womanspace Center. The 2008 Poet’s Market features a full length interview with Christine. She has edited Korone; Confluence: A Legacy Of Rock River Valley; and Land Connections: Writers of North Central Illinois. She founded the Rock River Poetry Contest and has judged many contests including Pen Women and Illinois Emerging Writers. Her weekly column, Literary Hook, has been published in Rock River Times for several years. She has been a writing teacher and mentor since the early 70’s and currently gives workshops at The Clearing in Door County, Wisconsin.

HOW GOOD POEMS END: a Workshop in Coming to Conclusions
With Marilyn Taylor

The best poems nearly always feature an opening that grabs your attention, a middle that keeps you reading, and--perhaps most important of all-- a good, strong, inevitable close. This one-day workshop will focus on endings-- happy ones, sad ones, uncertain ones, even funny ones. We'll concentrate on avoiding potential pitfalls-- is the poem giving up too soon? Going on too long? Telling us what we already know?-- and we'll try some exercises that focus on ways of avoiding the predictable, the sentimental, the unnecessary. Finally, we'll look into ways of applying these techniques to those almost-finished poems of our own-- the ones that just don't seem to know when to stop. You’ll find this workshop a friendly and supportive environment for exploring this crucial part of writing successful poetry. It’s going to be intensive, it’s going to be fun, and your poems will love you for it!
Marilyn Taylor is the Poet Laureate of the state of Wisconsin for 2009 and 2010. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The American Scholar, Measure, and many other journals and anthologies. Her work took first place in recent competitions sponsored by Dogwood, Passager, The Ledge, The Atlanta Review, and GSU Review; and her second full-length book, titled Subject to Change (David Robert Books, 2004) was a nominee for the 2005 Poets Prize. Her newest collection, a chapbook titled Going Wrong, is due out from Parallel Press in July of 2009. Marilyn is a Contributing Editor for The Writer magazine, where her articles on poetic craft appear bimonthly. She facilitates workshops and gives readings across the state and throughout the country.

WRITING SCENES IN HISTORICAL FICTION: Research and Imagination
With Martha Bergland

Good short stories often come, not from what we know all about, but from what is mysterious to us. The story comes as we work toward the unknown. In this workshop, we will practice some techniques that allow us to imagine a mystery person, perhaps an ancestor, perhaps someone famous, who lived in another time and place. Bring with you three to seven documents—photos, letters, clippings, diaries—of a person you never met, but want to write a short story about.

MARTHA BERGLAND’S first novel, “A Farm Under A Lake,” was published 1989, and her second novel, “Idle Curiosity,” in 1997. Bergland’s essays, poems, and short stories are widely published in literary journals. Her short story, “An Embarrassment of Ordinary Riches,” was awarded a Pushcart Prize and was included in Pushcart’s anthology, Love Stories for the Rest of Us. Essays, including “Girl Soldier,” have appeared recently in Milwaukee Magazine. Bergland taught English for twenty years at Milwaukee Area Technical College and currently teaches fiction writing workshops for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Spring Writers Festival, the Jewish Community Center, and others.

WRITING TROUBLE: Lying, Stealing, and Angry Relatives
With with Robin Hemley

ALL REGISTERED STUDENTS WILL RECEIVE A FREE SIGNED COPY OF ROBIN'S NEW BOOK, "DO-OVER"!

In this workshop, we'll talk about all kinds of writing trouble, the good and the bad. Writers should have a little bit of the bad boy or girl in them, a little of the trouble maker, risk taker, and rule breaker. But how do you know when you've stepped over the line? Bring in your questions and concerns and we'll talk about them, even if we can't completely resolve them. As a writer, I've written extensively about legal and ethical issues in writing both fiction and nonfiction, and while you can't always be sure that you're in the clear, there ARE ways to transform your work so that you can let your imagination dictate rather than your fears. But we won't only deal with nuts and bolts. We're also going to do an exercise or two that will allow you to write about a person, place, or thing you've always wanted to write about, but were afraid to because of possible repercussions.

Robin Hemley is the author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction, including the just-released DO-OVER: In Which a Forty-Eight Year Old Father of Three Returns to Kindergarten, Summer Camp, and Other Embarrassments (Little,Brown), as well as the popular craft book, TURNING LIFE INTO FICTION (Graywolf, 2006). His awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Nelson Algren Award for Fiction from The Chicago Tribune, two Pushcart Prizes, an Editor's Choice from The American Library Association, the Independent Press Book Award for Nonfiction, and many others. He has taught at conferences and in workshops around the world and is the former editor of The Bellingham Review. He currently teaches in The Nonfiction Writing at the University of Iowa and also in the low residency MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts.