Saturdays 2-4pm: 10 sessions begin October 5th
Godfrey will lead this unique workshop/symposium experience. He will read and comment on participants’ poems, of course, but will focus on encouraging participants to build their skills as readers of poetry and to approach reading as a practice intricately linked to writing. Each week, Godfrey will address topics he chooses to call Shifting Degrees: of contextuality of the poem; of grammar; of “aboutness”; of diction; of directness, or telling; of indirectness, or telling; of humor as serious expression as opposed to entertainment; of entertainment as disguise. All to the end of sensitively evaluating the intentions of the writer. He hopes there will be fruitful disagreements, and we all will better appreciate poems we would not want to write ourselves. And maybe write them.
John Godfrey’s latest books include Private Lemonade (Adventures in Poetry, 2003) and City of Corners (Wave Books, 2008). Tiny Gold Dress was published this year by Lunar Chandelier.