LiTFUSE

Friday, October 8

12:30 – 1:00            Registration – Harvest Hall

1:00 – 4:30          Ingrid Wendt – Fifty-two Pick-up:  Revision as Word Play (Master Class; preregistration required - all filled) – Harvest Hall – Who among us does not have a poem that just will not work, no matter what we try?  Different from most critique workshops, we will not attempt to “fix,” where needed, each other’s work.  We will, instead, play with several strategies for re-viewing and breathing new life into the essences of our failed attempts.  Please bring 18 copies of one poem you know isn’t working, and plenty of paper for warm-up activities and tossing our words all over the page.

4:30 – 5:00            Registration – Harvest Hall

Available between 4:30-7:30 – NET CONTROL POETRY, headquartered in the Warehouse, created by A.K. Mimi Allin:  You have a voice. Let’s hear it. Sign in to Net Control. Check out an HT (handheld transceiver). Schedule your 15-minute radio transmission and wander off into the Tieton wilds—into the orchards, onto Town Green, down into the dried up river basin or out to the cliffs overlooking Mount Clemens. Roam! Go where your feet take you and, once you’re there, transmit your poetry. Compose a poem on the spot or get there early and scratch it in the dirt. Whatever you do, don’t plumb your past for a tired old poem. Dig up something new. Radio Headquarters will be listening for you and will record your transmission. Your transmission will be compiled with the others radio transmissions into an audio file. The entire audio file will then be burned to a disc and distributed to all LiTFUSE participants. Out of the barriers comes a natural closeness, a roaming broadcast of Tieton, made up of the voices of LiTFUSE 2010.

5:00 – 5:50     Carol Trenga – The Eyes Have It – Harvest Hall – Simple & effective techniques to relax & strengthen a writer's tired eyes. 

6:00 – 6:15       Leonard Orr – Faculty reading / talk / performance – Book Arts.

6:15 – 7:15        Registration – Warehouse Atrium

6:15 – 7:15        Taco Truck – Warehouse

7:15 - 7:45         Registration - Harvest Hall

7:30 – 9:30       Tara Hardy – Grand Slam – Harvest Hall – (Open to the Public & FREE ADMISSION) – Tara helps us tell it like it is.

9:30 – 9:45     Tara Hardy – Faculty reading / talk / performance – Harvest Hall - 

Saturday, October 9

8:00 – 6:30            Please visit and participate in NET CONTROL POETRY, headquartered in the Warehouse.  See Friday @ 4:30 for description.

8:00 – 10:00            Registration – Warehouse Atrium

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

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

9:20 – 11:20            Morning Breakout Sessions

9:20 – 11:20        Session One (Choose one workshop)

Lorraine Healy – “This bunch of flowers and horseshoes …”  What Neruda’s Odes Can Teach Us – Harvest Hall – Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s three books of odes are an extravagant catalog of praise to the simplest things of this world. The atom, a tuna, laziness, love – the everyday elements and essences of human experience glow in the translucent language of these poems. Nothing is “beneath” the poet’s perception: the odes praise ordinary objects as well as the struggle of those who are marginalized. What can we, as poets, learn from Neruda’s Odes, which he offered up as “this bunch of flowers and horseshoes”? This workshop explores the range of Neruda’s topics in the three books of the Odas Elementales, the vision of the world that stands behind them, and discusses the ways in which we can “unleash ourselves” upon the simplest objects and artifacts that surround us, and start writing our own poems of praise.

Lyn Coffin – Clarifying Narrative: a generative fiction-writing class – Warehouse Gallery – Contemporary writers often have a love affair with characterization or theme, but an uneasy or even dysfunctional relationship with plot. Participants in this generative writing class will learn how to develop a sound fictional structure by using narrative outlines. We will begin by writing the opening of a short fiction in response to a prompt. After a brief discussion of the handout (three-act event outlines of two Hemingway short stories) we will generate narrative outlines for our own stories. Toward the end of class, participants will write a new opening scene. Especially recommended for those who write "literary" or non-genre fiction.

Paul Nelson – The Personal Mythology of Organic Poetry – Book Arts – The process of training your ear to capture the chaotic energy of the moment in a poem is sometimes called Organic Poetry, where composition is an occasion of experience or experiment in consciousness. An entertaining workshop for serious writers of all levels of experience who are OPEN. Including sound from interviews with poets of this tradition (McClure, Myles, Rothenberg, Ginsberg, Waldman, others), lively discussions & writing exercises designed to help the act of writing be exhilarating revelation of content. Participants will develop a greater sense of their own personal mythology and learn to write at that level of consciousness.

11:20 – 12:40  Wander & wonder.  Lunch (not included) – LiTFUSE Cafe (Warehouse Atrium), or Vickie’s, La Pachanga or El Tapatio.

12:20 – 12:35            Paul Nelson – Faculty Reading / talk / performance – Book Arts.

12:40 – 2:00            Session Two (Choose one workshop)

A.K. Allin – Radio Poetry  – Warehouse Gallery – Radio Poetry is a game—always lively, sometimes silly, at times intense—communication is the goal. "Net" is a Ham radio term. Hams or amateur radio operators use stations to make contacts and participate in round table or "rag chew sessions" on the air. Poetry Nets are groups of people who come together to play Radio Poetry. Radio Poetry differs from performed or recited poetry in that it is open-ended and unprepared.  It arrives as it is said, in the moment. There are a few guidelines, techniques and devices that make playing safer and more enriching.  Consider Radio Poetry a less formal, unedited, looser version of your written work, as simple as communicating your experience and as complex as composing a sonnet on the fly. But beware, regular play has been known to get in the way of insipid thought. Composing or deciphering a shopping list may be impossible after this!

Leonard Orr – Using Silence with Intention: Leaving the Gap, the Ellipsis, the Unsaid – Harvest Hall – What are the variety of silences within a poem? This is commonly addressed directly only in connection with line and stanza breaks. But within poems there are silences of different durations and moods, emotional tempers, and rhetorical effects. Silence can be used intentionally to achieve intimacy or complicity with the reader, or to instill mystery and distance. This workshop will begin with discussion of a number of examples from poetry, art, film, and music to bring out the elements and types of silence and to consider the reader’s or audience’s interactions with gaps and fragments. Then we will write some short poems in response to prompts and see how consciousness of silence alters the work.

Lawson Fuseo Inada – Being in the West:  What Does that Mean to Us? – 

2:20 – 2:35           Carol Trenga – Breath & Movement Tune-Up – Tieton Town Green (Warehouse Gallery if raining)

2:20 – 2:35  Lorraine Healy – Faculty reading / talk / performance – Book Arts.

2:40 – 4:10            Session Three (Choose one workshop)

Lyn Coffin – Erasure Poetry – Book Arts – Taking as our inspiration Richard Rauschenberg's "An Erased Drawing by de Kooning," we'll do some erasure poetry – I'll read and hand out and we'll briefly discuss my "An Erased Poem by Billy Collins" and seek to prove the old adage, "Less is more."  This is a great technique for removing huge chunks of writers' block, by the way.  Please bring copies of two or three favorite poems; one of these may be your own.

Leonard Orr – Learning from Gary Snyder: Transcending Time and Detail in Nature Poems – Warehouse Gallery – Working with examples from Gary Snyder’s poetry and essays, in this workshop we will discuss the traditions his works exemplify (Whitman, Zen, Transcendentalism, the Beats, and numerous indigenous myth and rituals). Snyder is an important influence on Pacific Northwest poets in both their forms and their representations of nature, and what can be learned from the encounters with the vastness and wild, of the present moment and unmoored expanses of time, of the specific, detailed location and the cosmos. We will try to dismantle some drafts of poems (bring three of your poems concerning nature to this workshop). You will receive some post-workshop prompts to use in developing these traits in your own poetry.

Tara Hardy – On the Stage: Reading Aloud / Performing Your Poetry – Harvest Hall – Honoring a poem on the stage is as much of a craft as writing it in the first place.  During this experiential workshop, we’ll be learning essential elements of performing and reading work aloud.  In addition to language itself, our tools become body, voice, inflection.  Bringing sound, rhythm, and intent forward from the page onto the stage can not only be a delightful experience, but also illuminate what is and is not working on the page. In addition, knowing how to present your work makes you more appealing to publishers.  No one will be forced to read aloud, but the willing should bring 1 minute of material.

4:10 – 4:30              Tea & pee.

4:10 – 7:00            LiTFUSE Bookstore - Warehouse

4:30 – 5:50      The Spirit Walks Free – featuring Lawson Fuseo Inada, with Mitsuki Dazai, koto, Alan Sutherland, butoh dancer, & Michael Schein – Warehouse Central – The entire LiTFUSE community joins for an exploration of the power of poetry to transcend captivity and transform violence.

5:50 – 6:10            Relax!

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

7:10 – 9:00            The LiTFUSE Banquet – Harvest Hall – Keynote by Ingrid Wendt – Poetry in the Age of Anxiety.

9:00 – 10+              Commune with fellow poetWizards.

Sunday, October 10            

8:00 – 1:00            Please visit and participate in NET CONTROL POETRY, headquartered in the Warehouse.  See Friday @ 4:30 for description.

8:15 – 8:45    Carol Trenga – Awaken the MindBody, Move the BodyMind – Harvest Hall – QiGong self-massage & gentle yoga.  No special clothing or props required.

8:55 – 10:15            Session Four (Choose one workshop)

Lorraine Healy – Surrealist Poetic Games – Harvest Hall – Using some updated ideas that originated with the Surrealist movement in the 1920s, we will create new poems in the course of this workshop. If I tell you more, I give too much away! Bring paper, pen/pencil, and a willingness to have fun and get a little wacky with language.

Lawson Fuseo Inada – Tieton Haiku  – Book Arts – Creating and sharing “American Haiku” – on the spot.

Michael Schein – God the Trope – Warehouse Gallery – 

For the faithful poet, there is no contradiction in tapping into the powerful symbolism of religion. But for the agnostic poet, God is the proverbial 800 pound gorilla.  What does it mean for an atheist to talk to God?  This workshop explores how non-believers and skeptics can mine the treasure box of heavy language associated with religion in our poetry.

10:15 – 10:45            Stroll.

10:25 – 10:40        Lyn Coffin – Faculty reading / talk / performance – Book Arts.

10:50 – 12:20         Session Five (Choose one workshop)

A.K. Allin – Walkie-Talkie Poetry – Warehouse Gallery – Tieton is a mighty lovely, little apple-growing town atop a dusty plateau in Eastern Washington and October is harvest-time. What could be better than a romp around Tieton at harvest time? I say nothing indeed! Walking is good for a writer. It calms the spirit, clears the mind and rejuvenates the body. Walkie-Talkie Poetry will take you on a romp through the orchards with 2-way radios. While walking, we’ll polish the two most important skills we possess as poets—the ability to be present and the ability to listen. Being present gives our poetry color and listening heightens our experience. To be vibrant poets, we must excel at both. This workshop is about realizing the intimate exchange poetry can offer. After several exercises in the orchards, we’ll convene to discuss our experience and, like radio repeaters, relay our orchard experience from memory to a listening audience. This last step takes our recent experience and turns it into a poetry performance, one that we can easily share because we already own it.

Ingrid Wendt – Poems You Didn’t Know You Could Write: Language Play with Reluctant Readers and Writers – Harvest Hall – Looking for new ways to “snag” students into writing?  This hands-on workshop by Ingrid Wendt, poetry consultant for the NCTE, will help participants lose their dread of teaching poetry writing in the classroom through engaging activities that bring out the poet in everyone.  Participants begin by looking at “writer’s block” and ways to get around it.  Then, with the pressure removed to produce whole poems, we'll experiment with some (not all) of poetry’s building blocks:  figures of speech,  musical language, rhythm, parallel structures, and repetition.   Wendt's book Starting with Little Things, the basis for this workshop, will be available for purchase during the workshop, as well as before.

Paul Nelson – Keeping Your Hand (foot, spleen) in It:  Poetry Writing Exercises – Book Arts – Finding time to write in this chaotic era can be challenging, but by experiencing a variety of writing exercises (postcards, American Sentences) we’ll have more possibilities of finding that one project which defines us as a person/poet. Charles Olson, Jose Kozer, Anne Waldman, Nathaniel Mackey, Pablo Neruda, Ed Sanders and Lorine Niedecker are among the poets whose work or methods we may examine or use as examples. Participants will leave the course with several new poems.

12:20 – 1:20            Lunch (not included) – 

1:30 – 2:30            LiTFUSE Open Mic & Poetry Orchestra! – Harvest Hall – Sign-up sheet goes up at 1:10.  The 1^st 18 sign-ups get 2 minutes each, including introductions, followed by the World Premier of the Poetry Orchestra.  

2:30 – 2:55          Faculty Featured Reading by Ingrid Wendt – Harvest Hall

2:55             Hugs, kisses, farewells