Thursday, April 18th

10:30AM-12:00PM Phoenix MST
Location: Piper Writers House 
 

What to expect at a glance:

• See how expert poets use repetition or anaphora to create sound and image patterns in their work
• Explore different approaches to adaptation and translation as a tool for creating new creative pieces
• Learn a new form ("The Cascade") and develop a draft in this form
• Discover how attention to form can help you revise your work

Course Description:

How do form and imitation work to help us open our imaginations? Arthur Sze and Wang Jiaxin will demonstrate how poets use simple tools such as repetition to create a spell, to create a pattern of rhythmic insistence and even to develop new poetic forms. They will also look at the various ways in which renovating, adapting, and rewriting the work of other poets can open new poetic doors. Sample works considered will include Robert Hass, George Trakl, and Issa. Participants will be given a choice of prompts to respond to and after a writing period will share and discuss the works produced. Students will leave with fresh approaches to crafting a poem and at least one new form (“The Cascade”) to experiment with on their own.

About the instructor:

Arthur Sze has published eleven books of poetry, including Sight Lines (2019), which won the National Book Award, and The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems (2021). His other books include Compass Rose (2014), a Pulitzer Prize finalist and The Ginkgo Light (2009), selected for the PEN Southwest Book Award and the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association Book Award. He has also published one book of Chinese poetry translations, The Silk Dragon (2001), selected for the Western States Book Award, and edited Chinese Writers on Writing (2010). 

Wang Jiaxin is a poet, essayist, critic, and translator. Wang has published numerous books of poetry: Commemoration; Moving Cliff; Poetry by Wang Jiaxin; Unfinished Poems; Tarkovsky’s Tree; Rewriting an Old Poem; Marginalia; Memory of the Future. Collections of literary and critical essays include A Meeting of Man and the World; A Nightingale in Its Own Time; Poems Without a Hero; Finding a Perch for the Phoenix; The Snow’s Regalia; Before Your Late Face; Translations as Recognition; The Master Who Taught My Soul to Sing; The Poet and His Time.