LiTFUSE

Friday, October 31.

·    1:00 – 4:20            Lorna Dee Cervantes Master Class “Writing Down the Dead” (preregistration required) – Harvest Hall (All Full)

·    5:30 – 7:15            Taco Truck – Harvest Hall

·    7:30 – 8:30            Jim Bodeen – Cosecha de Poesía: Harvesting Our Poems During the Days of the Dead:  It’s Story Time – Harvest Hall – No more picking those poems off trees now. Bring three pieces exploring your work from the past year. Story, poem, corrido, jokes. All welcome. These are the days of the Dead. We’re talking with our ancestors. Ask them what they need. Ask them how they’re doing. I’ve been putting some poems into little movies. If you’re a movie, bring the movie. But tell us now, what have your dead been saying to you? Bring us your report. Show us your documentation.  (free & open to all; LitFuse registration not required).

·    8:30 – 10:00            Reception for Poet Laureate, Sam Green – Harvest Hall

 

Saturday, November 1.

• 8:00 – 10:00                        Registration – Warehouse Atrium (staffed until 10:30)

·    8:00 – 10:50            LitFuse Cafe – Warehouse Atrium

·    8:30 – 9:00            Ingathering – Carol Trenga – Warehouse Gallery

·    9:00 – 9:10            Director’s Welcome – Michael Schein –
Warehouse Gallery

·    9:20 – 12:00            Morning Breakout Sessions

·    9:20 – 10:30

v    Elizabeth Austen – Beyond the Page:  Your Poems Aloud – Book Arts Studio – This workshop is for anyone interested in giving his or her poems a vital life aloud – "beyond the page."  Reading poems for an audience doesn't come naturally to everyone, but it can be learned, and the exploration can help you become a better writer. We'll explore the physical nature of language, and practice embodying the poem - backing it up with breath, voice and body.  Bring two short poems of your own. (1.3 Clock Hours approved for teachers)

v    David Ossman – Engaging Found Sound in Your Poems – Harvest Hall – David's poems include elements from many ‘real’ sources, including postcards, guidebooks, handbooks, cookbooks, junk mail, pulp magazines and the New York Times.  He'll remember Duchamp and Cage, and revisit found poems for multiple realizations and voices, including live radio.

v    Dan Peters – As is Painting, So Is Poetry – Warehouse Gallery – Writing Tieton’s art.

·    10:30 – 10:50  Wander & wonder, confront art, enjoy tea & thee.  Unless otherwise stated, snacks are available in 2 places during class breaks:  Harvest Hall, and the LitFuse Cafe (Warehouse Atrium).

• 10:50 – 12:00

v    Mark Halperin – Meter: the Pulse, the Tick of the Poem – Book Arts Studio – An introduction to the basics of traditional meter in English.  What makes a poem sound traditional?  What produces the regularly recurring beat we recognize, and how?  How do modern poems modify and play with that sound? (1.3 Clock Hours approved for teachers)

v    Carol Trenga – Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement® – Harvest Hall – Enhance your creativity through meditative movement.

v    A.K. Allin – Guerilla Poetry 1 – Warehouse Gallery – When is the last time you heard poetry whispered through a 300-pound block of ice, saw it running around a lake on a hot pink t-shirt, on a matchbook or had to walk through a labyrinth to get to it? Where does poetry belong? Who has access to poetry where you live? This class that aims to make poetry "happen." Better still, it aims to make you a part of poetry happening. Learn how to make them scramble for poetry with the help of Guerilla Poet, A. K. Allin (The Poetess at Green Lake), known for her daring & innovative approaches to public poetry instigations. We'll talk about what it is, how to generate and effect ideas, and then we'll make it happen right there in Mighty Tieton. Who's ready to move? 

·    12:00 – 1:10         Lunch (not included) – LitFuse Cafe (Warehouse Atrium), or Vickie’s (Wisconsin & Maple), or El Tapatio (Wisconsin)

• 1:10 – 4:20                        Afternoon Breakout Sessions
• 1:10 – 2:30

v    David Ossman – The Day of the Bread of the Dead – Book Arts –  A round loaf, scented with anise, orange-blossom water, cross-bones and tears. Coping with the ingredients for poems on the events of a death.

v    Sam Green – Integrating Poetry into the Curriculum – Harvest Hall – This workshop is primarily directed to middle school and high school educators – but not only English teachers!  Poetry can spark interest and insight in many disciplines, including social studies, history, music, and even physics. (1.3 Clock Hours approved for teachers)

·    2:40 – 3:00            Carol Trenga – Breath & Movement Tune-Up – Harvest Hall

·    3:10 – 4:30

v    Felicia Gonzalez – Book Arts – Diving into the Loud – This workshop for writers and educators explores the challenges of bringing creative writing into the classroom across the humanities. Including a discussion of why teaching writing matters. We'll work with writing prompts to get everyone's pen moving. (1.3 Clock Hours approved for teachers)

v    Mark Halperin – Questioning the Poet:  A Mini-Reading with Maxi-Discussion – Harvest Hall – What was Mark thinking?  Why did he choose this word over that, this rhythm, that form?  How is intent made manifest: how much planned, how much discovered in writing? What needs to be explicit, what left unsaid?  Finding the poem behind the poem: a chance to ask those questions you always wanted to ask, to argue with the poet.  Anything goes.

• 4:30 – 7:00; 9:00-10:00  LitFuse Bookstore – Warehouse

·    4:30 – 4:50              Coffee/Tea/Snacks – LitFuse Café – Warehouse Atrium (not Harvest Hall)

·    5:00 – 6:20             El Dia De Los Muertos Celebration – Warehouse Gallery –  
Bring a photo, memento, poem, song or story to share. Honor a special poet or loved one who has passed over.

• 6:20 – 7:00            Schmooze – No-host bar – Warehouse

·    7:10 – 9:00            The LitFuse Banquet (Sponsored by Mighty Tieton, LLC) – Harvest Hall – Keynote by Lorna Dee Cervantes: “On Writing Down the Dead”

·    9:00 – 10:00              Booksigning & Socializing – Warehouse

Sunday, November 2.           

·    7:30 – 8:15   Yoga & Walking Meditation – Carol Trenga – Harvest Hall (please bring a yoga mat)  

·    7:45 – 9:15     LitFuse Cafe Open – Warehouse Atrium

• 8:45 – 11:45                        Morning Breakout Sessions

·    8:45 – 10:05

v    Elizabeth Austen – Teaching Revision: A Poet's Toolbox –  Harvest Hall – You've got the first draft on paper. Now what?  How do you revise toward a stronger, more compelling poem? We'll look at a variety of ways to teach the craft of poetry through the revision process. We'll focus on the image and the line, developing flexible tools for revision. (1.3 Clock Hours approved for teachers)

v    A.K. Allin – Guerilla Poetry 2 – Warehouse Gallery – Like Saturday but different!

·    10:05 – 10:25         Chit-chat, snicker-snack, omphaloskepsis.

• 10:25 – 11:45

v    Dan Peters – Triggering Tieton – Book Arts – As the poet Richard Hugo said, “You found the town, now write the poem.” Using Hugo's essay, “Triggering Town” as a guide, writers will explore the heart of Tieton’s town square in order to find images that “ignite your need for words.”  We are outsiders mapping our insides. (1.3 Clock Hours approved for teachers)

v    Jim Bodeen – Harvest Hall – Following the Music/Taking Instructions/Siguiendo la Diosa – Bring three short pieces of writing that show some aspect of how you have followed your path into uncharted territory in search of the poem, the song, el camino desconocido. I’m very interested in how the poet finds her way/his way into the kind of danger that lets uncertainty and listening find the way in the writing. Let us workshop the unknown way in our writing and not be too concerned with workshopping the poem. Bring the adventures that have resulted from following the music, and exploring where the music comes from.

·    11:50 – 12:50          Lunch (not included) – LitFuse Cafe (Warehouse Atrium) or Vickie’s (Wisconsin & Maple)

·    1:00 – 2:40            LitFuse Open Mic! & Reading by Lorna Dee Cervantes – Harvest Hall

·    3:15 – 3:45            Meet at Yakima Poetry Pole to post broadsides & poems – 225 S. 15^th Ave., Yakima 98902

Note:  Schedule subject to change; Clock hours approved for District 105, all 6 classes = 8.0

Notes on Faculty:

• Lorna Dee Cervantes is an internationally acclaimed Chicana poet from San Josã, California.  Her poetry, which celebrates her Mexican- and Native-American heritage from a strong feminist perspective, has appeared in nearly 200 anthologies and textbooks, including five of the Norton poetry anthologies (Modern, American, English, Contemporary, and Women’s Poetry), as well as Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry (eds. Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Jennifer Gillan, 1994), No More Masks! An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Women Poets (ed. Florence Howe, 1993), and After Aztlan: Latino Poets of the Nineties (ed. Ray González, 1992).  Lorna Dee is the author of the American Book Award-winning collection Emplumada (1981), as well as From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger (1991), which was awarded the Paterson Prize for best poetry book and the Latino Literature Award, and most recently, Drive: the First Quartet (2006).   The recipient of many other honors, awards and literary fellowships, including the prestigious Lila Wallace-Readers’ Digest Award, a Pushcart Prize, and two NEA fellowships, Lorna Dee has performed her poetry twice at the Library of Congress, and at venues all around the United States and the world.  Lorna Dee founded and directed “Floricanto Colorado” showcasing Chicano literature in Denver and surrounding schools.  On July 4, 1976, she founded the influential small press and Chicano literary journal Mango Publications, which was the first to publish Sandra Cisneros, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Alberto Rios, Ray Gonzalez, Ronnie Burk, Orlando Ramã-rez (co-editor), and which also championed the early work of many other Chicano writers. Lorna Dee is a former Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and now makes her home in San Francisco, the mission of her birth.
•  A. K. “Mimi” Allin produces poetry, text-art and poetry-driven performance. She recently completed a year-long performance for which she sat outside, at a small wooden desk, every Sunday from 9-5, for one full year on the lawn of an urban park in Seattle, WA. Her mission — to interject poetry into public places and open a dialog about poets, poetry and the search for the human spirit. Her journals can be found at thepoetessatgreenlake. blogspot.com. Allin holds an M.A. in Writing from City College of New York. Her work has been published on tote bags, t-shirts and matchbooks. She has work online and in journals, including The Argotist, Crab Creek Review, How2, Ibbetson Street Review, One Three Eight and La Petite Zine. She is an artist-in-residence at Studio-Current and a board member of the WPA. She lives aboard a 24' sailboat and works in a boatyard in historic Ballard.

• Elizabeth Austen holds a BFA in Theatre/Acting from Southern Methodist University, and an MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from Antioch University.  Elizabeth spent her teens and twenties working as an actor and director in cities as diverse as London, England and Holland, Michigan. After six months of solo rambling in the Andes region of South America she left the theatre. For the past 10+ years, she’s been writing poems – some lyrical, some humorous – on the nature and inter-relatedness of power, sexuality and mortality. Her poems appeared recently in Willow Springs and Floating Bridge Review.  Elizabeth served as the Washington “roadshow” poet for 2007, giving readings and workshops in rural areas around the state. She provides weekly commentary on Pacific Northwest poetry readings on KUOW, 94.9, public radio. She is the recipient of grants from 4Culture and the City of Seattle, and is an alumna of Hedgebrook and the Jack Straw Writers Program. She has taught poetry at Richard Hugo House, in the schools, and at various community colleges and poetry workshops in Washington. Her audio CD, skin prayers, is available at elizabethausten.org. Elizabeth makes her living as a communications specialist at Seattle Children’s Hospital.
• Jim Bodeen – Four years ago I was given a word, Storypath/ Cuentocamino. Two slammed-together nouns in English and Spanish. No handbook, no definition. I left classroom teaching after 33 years where I had a dual life with teaching and poetry. I carry a notebook and a camera and write everyday. Storypath/Cuentocamino has taken me on multiple occasions inside the rancho La Cuestita, Michoacán, México; to El Salvador where I spent time walking with Lutheran Bishop Medardo Gómez, called the Bishop of Peace, and again visiting repopulated communities from the Guerra civil.  I rode the Peace Train from Meridian, Mississippi to Washington, DC. I accompanied a group to Honduras as part of two programs, Pure Water for the World, and Adelante, a micro lending program for women. I have made numerous short retreats to Holden Village, an ecumenical Lutheran Retreat Center/former mining town, above Lake Chelan where I have given short workshops and participated in extended conversations involving poetry, prayer, and listening. Storypath/Cuentocamino is taking me into deeper explorations of testimony/testimonio, witnessing, and the relationship of poetry and listening. I’m not an expert in anything. I’m a beginner. In Spanish the word is principiante.
• Felicia Gonzales was born and raised in Cuba. She believes that language and the act of speaking are not only physical, but also have a geographic presence. An alumna of the Hedgebrook Writers Retreat and the Jack Straw Writers Program, Felicia’s work has been anthologized in Word Thursdays: A Poetry Anthology (1999).  She is a recipient of a 2008 4Culture award for Swimming in Mercury, a collection of short stories; a 2007 Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission Fellowship; and a 2006 grant from the Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, City of Seattle, for her newly released chapbook, Recollection Graffiti.  Felicia was also selected as a Writer in Residence at the Kenyon Review writers’ workshop.  She has taught adult writing at Richard Hugo House, and taught writing to youth through “Emerging Voice”, Eleventh Hour Productions’ youth program.
• Sam Green was born in Sedro-Woolley, Washington, and raised in the nearby fishing and mill town of Anacortes. After four years in the military, including service in Vietnam, he attended college under the Veterans Vocational Rehabilitation Program, earning degrees from Highline Community College and Western Washington University (B.A. & M.A.). A 30-year veteran of the Poetry-in-the-Schools program, he has taught in literally hundreds of classrooms. He has also taught at Southern Utah University, Western Wyoming Community College, served six winter terms as Distinguished Visiting Northwest Writer at Seattle University, and six summers in Ireland. His poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Poetry, Poetry NOW, Poetry East, Southern Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner, among many others. His ten collections of poems include Vertebrae: Poems 1972-1996 (Eastern Washington University Press) and The Grace of Necessity (Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 2008), winner of the 2008 Washington State Book Award for poetry. For 25 years he has lived on a remote island off the Washington coast in a log house he built himself, and is, with his wife, Sally, Co-Editor of Brooding Heron Press, which specializes in publication of fine letterpress editions of poetry. In December he was named by Governor Christine Gregoire as the first Poet Laureate for the State of Washington.
• Mark Halperin received a BA in physics from Bard College, worked as a junior research physicist, studied philosophy at the New School for Social Research, and graduated from the University of Iowa with an MFA in poetry.  He taught in the English Department at Central Washington University, was an exchange professor in Japan, Estonia and Russia, and a Fulbright Scholar in Russia and Ukraine. Falling Through The Music, his fifth and most recent book of poetry, was published in 2007 by University of Notre Dame Press.  His earlier volumes include Time As Distance (New Issues/Western Michigan University, 2001), The Measure Of Islands (Wesleyan University Press, 1991), A Place Made Fast (Copper Canyon Press, 1984), and Backroads (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976), for which he received the United States Award of the International Poetry Forum. His most recent chapbooks include, Changing Weather and Near and Far, published by March Street Press, and For Every Action, d-press, as well as a collection in the Pudding House Publication’s “Greatest Hits” series.  He has published more than three hundred poems in such literary journals as “Northwest Review,” “Poetry,” “Prairie Schooner,” “Yale Review,” received two Artist Trust grants, and won Prairie Schooner’s 2008 Glenna Lushei prize. Halperin’s translations from the poetry and literary prose of Soviet-period and contemporary Russian writers have appeared in “The Paris Review,” “Tin House,” and “Antioch Review.”  Zephyr Press published A Million Premonitions, selected poems of Viktor Sosnora, in a bilingual edition (2004), which he co-translated with Dinara Georgeoliani.  Their translation of V. Pyetsukh’s story, “Me and the Sea,” received the Virginia Quarterly’s  1999, Emily Clark Balach prize for best story, and that of Alexandr Kushner’s essay, “The Master of Delft,” was included in the Pushcart Prizes of 2004.  Their translations of Amelin, Denisov, and Volkov are included in Contemporary Russian Poetry, An Anthology, (eds. E. Bunimoivch and J. Kates [bi-lingual]) Dalkey Archive Press, 2008. With Joseph Powell, Halperin wrote Accent On Meter, a text/handbook on prosody, metrics and fixed forms, with exercises (National Council of Teachers of English, 2004).  His other prose includes articles on fly-fishing, which have appeared in “American Angler” and “Fly-tyer.” He and his wife, the painter and graphic artist, Bobbie Halperin, live with their dog, Dasha outside Ellensburg, Washington.
• David Ossman is perhaps best known as an irrational fraction of the Dadaist theatre group, The Firesign Theatre, but he has another incarnation as a poet.  His first book was The Sullen Art, a interview-chronicle of the Beat and New York poets circa 1960.  He has published poetry since the mid-1950s, including Radio Poems, a group of letter-press books and broadsheets from Turkey Press (Isla Vista) in the early 1980's, and work in the final five issues of Saturday Afternoon Journal (1996-2000, Los Angeles).  His long poem, "The Day of The Dead," appears in a new collection, Poems For Fools.  Ossman's quasi-memoir, Dr. Firesign's Follies, has just been published, joining The Ronald Reagan Murder Case, both from Bear Manor Press.  The Firesign Theatre's new "Box of Danger" (Shout! Factory) celebrates 40 years of Firesign with a 4 CD set of the comic adventures of Nick Danger, Third Eye, featuring Ossman as Catherwood the Butler, General Otis Starsucker, George L. Tirebiter and The (Canadian) Announcer.
• Dan Peters teaches writing at Yakima Valley Community College in Yakima, Washington.  He and Amy live in Selah.  He is the author of The Reservoir (Blue Begonia Press 2002), and co-editor of Weathered Pages: the Poetry Pole (Blue Begonia Press 2005).  Throws right, writes left.
• Raúl Sánchez grew up with El Dia de los Muertos as part of his cultural heritage. Drawing on ties to his native Mexico, Raúl’s sometimes flavorful poems may be splattered with words in Spanish, Spanglish or Caló.   Raúl’s most recent publications are in the Floating Bridge Review, Volume 1, “Poetry from the left corner,” an Anthology of local poets, and on “Speaking desde las heridas”; Cibertestimonios Transfronterizos/Transborder published by the  Centro de Investigaciones sobre América del Norte and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. In April, his work appeared in the Edmonds Community College “Poem In Your Pocket” project and on “Bookmarks,” published by the Seattle Public Library as part of the Art Project Lines on a spine: Poems by the book. Raúl serves on the Board of the Washington Poets Association, and volunteers as a DJ on Sabor! and on Al Lado Latino for KBCS 91.3 FM, a community radio station.  Raúl also served as the representative of Los Norteños writing group from 2002 - 2007.
• Carol Trenga offers instruction in Yoga, Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement®, and meditation. She is grateful for opportunities to share these practices. In her teaching, she explores cultivating self-awareness, and living creatively with clear intention. Carol holds a PhD in Environmental Health from the University of Washington, and was called to her new vocation after seventeen years working in health science research and teaching. She is a graduate of the Pacific Yoga Teacher Training Program, a certified Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement® instructor, and a trainee in Russell Delman’s Embodied Life program.
• Michael Schein, LitFuse Director, is the author of Just Deceits:  A Historical Courtroom Mystery (Bennett & Hastings 2008).  Michael’s poetry and other work appears (among other places) in Slow Trains, Chrysanthemum, The Ledge, Pontoon 8 & 9 (Floating Bridge Press), American Drivel Review, Elysian Fields Quarterly, RockSaltPlum, Runes, Lilies & Cannonballs Review, American Atheist, Drash, The November 3^rd Club, and an anthology, The Art of Bicycling (Breakaway Books 2005).  His work has received several awards, and been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize.  Michael serves as a reviewer for a literary journal, he is on the speakers’ bureau of the ACLU of Washington, and he is the former Executive Director of Tieton Arts & Humanities.

 

NORTHWEST POETS UNiTE!