LiTFUSE

SEE BELOW for 2011 SCHEDULE!

We are honored & tickled to announce that profound poet and teacher MARVIN BELL will headline LiTFUSE 2011, September 9-11.  Yes, LiTFUSE ends on the 10th Anniversary of the attacks.  Unquiet spirits walk the land; what better way to engage them than joining your fellow poets in Tieton for LiTFUSE?

LiTFUSE:  Poets' Workshop
September 9-11, 2011 - Tieton, WA

YES!  MY MUSE CRAVES LiTFUSE! 
Entire weekend, excluding Friday afternoon Master Classes:

ONLY $135 early (by August 15th), $150 regular
(includes Saturday Poets' Banquet).  Optional add-ons:

MASTER CLASS, Friday, 9/9, 1:00-4:30 - Guaranteed limit: 12 students
with JUDITH ROCHE, $80 ($100 without LiTFUSE registration)

To REGISTER, please CLICK HERE!

LiTFUSE 2011 SCHEDULE OF AMaZING EVENTS . . . 

Friday, September 9

12:30 – 1:00  Registration – Harvest Hall

1:00 – 4:30  Marvin Bell – Master Class –Harvest Hall – (Full) We will read one poem by each poet as an occasion for conversation about writing poetry in general. The slant will be on poetry as discovery, as another way to think, as an attempt to use words to get beyond words, as a way of pushing this or that envelope – as differentiated from, say, entertainment or personal biography – Limit 12 students; Preregistration required - (Full);  OR

1:00 – 4:30  Judith Roche – Master Class – Book Arts Studio – This is a writing class focused on sharpening the tools in the poet’s toolbox. We’ll use our time in an intimate setting to look at examples as well as participants’ poems in terms of  basic elements of poetry and various craft issues, including line-breaks, meter, rhyme and form, repetition and revision.  Along the way we’ll be generating new poems with exercises, ideas and examples. Our goal will be to have you leave the class with revision ideas for the poem you bring in as well as having one or more poem starts to work on later. Please email me one or two poems before LiTFUSE (CLICK HERE) and bring twelve copies to class. – Limit 12 students; Preregistration required - $80 ($100 if you are not registered for LiTFUSE)

Everything else, included in general admission ($135 early; $150 regular):

4:30 – 4:45  Registration – Harvest Hall

4:45 – 5:15 Carol Trenga – Creating / Movement – Harvest Hall – Enhance creativity through Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement®.No special clothing or props required.

5:15 – 5:45 Carol Trenga – The Eyes Have It– Harvest Hall – Simple and effective techniques to relax and strengthen your eyes.

6:00 – 7:45  Registration – Harvest Hall

6:00 – 7:20  Light Dinner (for purchase) – Harvest Hall

6:50 – 7:05  Joannie Kervran Stangeland – Faculty reading / talk / performance – Book Arts.

7:05 – 7:20  Jane Alynn – Faculty reading / talk / performance – Book Arts.

7:30 – 9:00  Karen Kevorkian – Grounding the Surreal – Book Arts – Extravagant subject matter calls for figurative language, although ordinary events and observations lodge in the connections among the metaphorical images as they accumulate. When the subject is playfully approached, finding a coherent thread among the images can be challenging. The ordinary provides context and allows intuitive relationships to emerge. Sample poets: Lynn Emanuel, Matthea Harvey, Ralph Angel.

7:30 – 9:30 LiTFUSE Open Slam, MC’d by Lauren Zuniga & Roberto Carlos Ascalon– Harvest Hall – (Open to the Public & FREE).

9:30 – 9:45 Roberto Carlos Ascalon – Faculty reading / talk / performance – Harvest Hall.

9:45 – 10:00  Lauren Zuniga – Faculty reading / talk / performance – Harvest Hall.

Saturday, September 10

8:00 – 10:00  Registration – Warehouse Atrium

8:00 – 10:00  LiTFUSE Cafe – Warehouse Atrium

8:25 – 8:40  Michael Schein – Welcome – Warehouse

8:40 – 9:00  Carol Trenga – Ingathering – Warehouse

9:10 – 10:45  First Breakout Session (Choose one)

Carolyne Wright – Literary Personae:  Alter-Egos and Subversive Selves –Ted Hughes had Crow; John Berryman had Henry Pussy-cat and Mr. Bones; and Marvin Bell has the Dead Man (or the Dead Man has him :).  We can assume any persona our alternate selves compel us to take on.  We can be anyone we wish to be, through the characters who speak our poems.  With poet Carolyne Wright--also known as a projection of her subversive alter-ego "Eulene"--we will look at techniques to step beyond the autobiographical, the default dramatic stance of contemporary poetry.  We will focus instead on personae, a term derived from Greek theatrical masks of comedy and tragedy, and try writing and performing in the voice and character of someone else.  We will explore creating, or deconstructing, a character from within, from the stance of the poet as actor and playwright, by incorporating dramatic monologue, voiced narrative, and multiple points of view, in order to subvert fixed notions of the poet as speaker.

Lauren Zuniga – Great Awakening – During what seems to be a frantic time of economic recession and tragic environmental concerns, it helps to be reminded of our incredible resourcefulness and power. This session travels through the grit and splendor of humanity, sustainability and consciousness.

Allen Braden – Applying for a Poetic License – We will discuss different ways poets, from Boethius to Baudeliare to Bukowski, have taken liberties within the genre.  In a generative, interactive workshop, we will also liberate poems or lines raging to be freed from each participant.  Expect to gain a respect for tradition and a knack for rebellion.

11:00 – 12:30  Second Breakout Session (Choose one)

Judith Roche – Sappho – She is our mother in many ways. She “invented” the love poem in about 600 B.C., and it was not included much in recorded literature for another 1,500 years or more, until the Troubadours in 13th and 14th century France. This will be a look at Sappho’s poetics and the love poem in contemporary terms. Along the way we’ll explore some writing exercises.

Jane Alynn – One Against Another: The Power of Contradiction in Poetry – “The light of any poet is contradiction” — Federic Garcia Lorca. If as Stephen Dunn says resistance leads to discovery participants will find in a phrase, in a line, or in an entire poem the tension between our original conception and its opposite, with ourselves transcended as is the poem.

Joannie Kervran Stangeland – Moving into Words – Let's get into our writing by getting out of our heads and into our bodies. We'll start with easy movements—simple weight shifts and swinging, repeating and finding a rhythm. When words surface, we'll transition from movement to writing on the paper until we run out of words. Then we'll start moving again--moving and writing, a great way to stretch ourselves and create new work.

12:30 – 1:40 Lunch (not included) – LiTFUSE Cafe (Warehouse Atrium).

12:30-1:40  LiTFUSE Bookstore - Warehouse Atrium

1:15-1:30 Karen Kevorkian – Faculty Reading / talk / performance – Book Arts.

1:40 – 3:20 Third Breakout Session (Choose one)

Roberto Carlos Ascalon – The Page Loves the Stage:Craft, Performance and You – The act of reciting poems pre-dates literacy.  It has always been designed to be read aloud.  How can we re-claim the wonder, magic and essentially performative nature of poetry?  In this workshop we will explore the nexus between the page and the stage by viewing examples of some of the best in performance poetry and through a few simple exercises learn to bring our poems to life.

Allen Braden – Smoke & Mirrors:The Magic of Duality in Poetry – Discussion of sample poems and exercises will address the following: how scientific inquiry mirrors the creative process, how the poem projects a modified reflection of the poet’s self; how poetic techniques involve imitation, reflection, personae and other doppelgangers, how poetry functions as sympathetic magic and how creative works on the natural world often reflect the artist’s inner world.

Lauren Zuniga – The Smell of Good Mud –This workshop is a hearty stew of poems that engage all the senses and travel the landscape of self awareness. Perfect for poets who are interested in each stunning detail in the tattered house of language.

3:20 – 4:40 LiTFUSE Bookstore – Warehouse Atrium

3:20 – 3:45 Tea & thee.

3:30 – 3:45 Carol Trenga – Breath & Movement Tune-In – Tieton Town Green (Book Arts if raining)

3:50 – 4:05  Allen Braden – Faculty reading / talk / performance – Book Arts.

4:05 – 4:30 Carolyne Wright & Eugenia Toledo – Faculty reading / talk / performance – Book Arts.

4:40 – 6:10 Nine-Eleven at 10 – Warehouse – A pagan exorcism of Nine-Eleven demons.

6:10 – 7:00 LiTFUSE Bookstore – Warehouse Atrium

6:10 – 7:00 Schmooze & Molt – No-host bar & Booksigning

7:10 – 9:00 The LiTFUSE Poets' Banquet – Harvest Hall – Keynote by Marvin Bell – What I Have Learned About Writing Poetry by Writing It.

Sunday, September 11

8:00 – 9:30 LiTFUSE Cafe – Warehouse Atrium

Fourth Breakout Session (Choose one)

8:30 – 10:20 NOTICE: Doug Johnson's Asian Brush Art - Cancelled due to a death in the family.  Check your email or check back for schedule changes, or plan to attend the events below:

8:30 – 9:45  A Conversation with Marvin Bell – The early bird gets the word, word, word.  Plus, either:

9:55 – 10:25 Carol Trenga – The Eyes Have It – Simple and effective
                        techniques to relax and strengthen your eyes; or

9:55 – 10:25 Judith Roche – Faculty reading / talk / performance.

10:35 – 12:15  Fifth Breakout Session (Choose one)

Carolyne Wright & Eugenia Toledo – Poetry in Translation / Translation in Poetry (La poesía en traducción / La traducción en poesía) – Literature in translation has been essential to our cultural understanding throughout time—and some of the most enduring and influential work that we read is in translation!  Among this work, poetry in translation has been a major influence on the sensibilities of poets in the West.  Translation from languages both major and less well-known has become an increasingly common practice for poets writing in English.  Seattle-based Chilean poet Eugenia Toledo, and American poet, translator, and Fulbright grantee to Chile, Carolyne Wright, will read and talk about translations from several Chilean poets (Pablo Neruda, Jorge Teillier, Nicanor Parra, and Eugenia Toledo), focusing on what does and does not work in transforming these into English-language poetry. In some cases, where several translations exist of the same poem, we will compare different versions.  Participants will do an exercise or two in translation, and in "literary palimpsest" replying to the work of other poets.  No prior experience with translation is required.

Roberto Carlos Ascalon – Reading & Writing Multi-Voiced Poems – Multi-Voiced poetry combines the best of theater, literature and music. Intimate workshops are the perfect place to explore the nuanced complexity, beauty and performative power of Multi-Voiced Poems.  We will read and watch some of the best examples of the genre and build a mini-ensemble through a few simple theater games.  With powerful writing exercises we will write short group pieces designed to be performed onstage.

Karen Kevorkian – Dot Connecting – Much contemporary poetry relies on techniques of juxtaposition to achieve stunning effects. This is true of writers ordinarily not thought of as being stylistically similar. Based on the premise that it’s impossible to write meaningless sequences, juxtaposition aligns images and tones with little or no transition, and is a good way to enliven the surface of a poem that feels too linear or narrative. We will read poems and do exercises that develop poems by intensifying language and sharpening images. Sample poets: CD Wright, Lisa Jarnot, Matthea Harvey, Ralph Angel, Tung Hui Hu, Stephanie Marlis.

12:15 – 1:20  Lunch (not included) – LiTFUSE Cafe (Warehouse Atrium).

1:30 – 2:30  LiTFUSE Open Mic! – Harvest Hall – Every LiTFUSIAN's chance to shine.  Sign-up sheet goes up at NOON.  First 15 poets, 3-4 minutes each.

2:30 – 3:00  Featured Faculty Reading by Marvin Bell – Harvest Hall

3:00 – 3:15  Marvin Bell booksigning – Harvest Hall

Hugs, kisses, farewells

As the spirit moves you:Yakima Poetry Pole to post poems – 225 S. 15th Ave., Yakima 98902

Note:  Schedule subject to change.

WOW!  Look at our 2011 Faculty . . . Marvin Bell(!), American-book-award winners Judith Roche and Carolyne Wright, Chilean poet Eugenia Toledo, UCLA professor Karen Kevorkian, Yakima Valley via Chicago & Tacoma award-winning poet Allen Braden, Oklahoma slam-champ Lauren Zuniga, New York City spoken-word artist & teacher Roberto Carlos Ascalon, Stafford-Award-winner Jane Alynn, Floating Bridge Press-Award-winner Joannie Kervran Stangeland, Feldenkrais®-Yoga-meditation mentor Carol Trenga, and Cave Moon Press Editor Doug Johnson, and cellist Jessika Kitzman.  CLICK HERE for faculty bios.

Fine print:

LODGING:  Information on lodging is available HERE.  Limited free lodging is available if you need it to offset costs; please send an email through our contact page stating: Names and number of people to be accommodated; sleeping arrangements desired; any special needs or requests; your contact information.

SCHOLARSHIPS:  The Board of Tieton Arts & Humanities feels that LiTFUSE should not be denied to poets due to financial hardship.  If the above costs create a financial hardship for you, please use the contact page to explain the hardship, what ability (if any) you have to make partial payment, your writing experience, and how LiTFUSE will make a difference in your life.

DIRECTIONS: For directions to Tieton, WA, site of LiTFUSE, please CLICK HERE.

PARTICULAR CLASSES:  Instructions for class selection will be emailed to you when you sign up.

NORTHWEST WRITERS, UNiTE!