Writing in the Light of Death: Withness & Experiments in Joy with Duriel E. Harris
Presented in collaboration with Woodland Pattern Book Center.
Fee: $175/$160 for members of Lynden or Woodland Pattern (one discount only).
Registration: Space is limited; advance registration required. Register online or by phone 414-446-8794.
The Lynden Sculpture Garden and Woodland Pattern present Writing in the Light of Death: Withness & Experiments in Joy, a workshop with writer-in-residence Duriel E. Harris. Harris will give a reading at Woodland Pattern on Wednesday, June 6 at 7 pm, and the workshop will culminate in a reading by participants, followed by a reception, at Lynden on Friday, June 8 at 6 pm.
In this workshop we will sit with the vulnerability that accompanies our aliveness toward enriching our writing and art-making practices. Using the essay “The Light of Death” (Harriet Blog, April 2018) and its associated terrain as anchor and springboard, we will explore the insights perceptions gleaned from our embodied experiences as material for Experiments in Joy. (For more on Experiments in Joy see here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2016/08/although-it-felt-like-a-confession-or-introducing-the-harri-blogject-the-harripog-and-other-experiments-in-joy)
Participants are encouraged to read the essay “The Light of Death” in advance and journal about what they find stimulating, provocative, and/or meaningful while reading. How have you contended with death or mortality? What responses to (human) suffering do you see in your writing? How do you work with this material to make art? Where have you found love where you thought none could abide?
Participants are invited to bring journal entries and poem drafts as well as pertinent, intriguing and/or provocative phrases, passages, verses, images, lyrics/songs by other writers/artists/thinkers to share and use in making/writing. We will explore these materials with an acknowledgment of the shared connection of interbeing, approaching our craft through practices of generosity and exchange.
About Duriel E. Harris
Duriel E. Harris is a poet, performer, and sound artist. She is author of three print volumes of poetry, including her most recent, No Dictionary of a Living Tongue (Nightboat, 2017), Drag (2003) and Amnesiac: Poems (2010). Multi-genre works include her one-woman theatrical performance Thingification, as well as Speleology (2011), a video collaboration with artist Scott Rankin. Recent and upcoming appearances include performances at the Lake Forest College Allan L. Carr Theatre, the Chicago Jazz Festival (with Douglas Ewart & Inventions), the Greenhouse Theater (Chicago), the Naropa Capitalocene, The Votive Poetics Workshop (New Zealand), and Festival Internacional de Poesía de La Habana (Cuba).
Cofounder of the avant garde poetry/performance trio The Black Took Collective, Harris has been a MacDowell and Millay Colony fellow and has received grants from the Illinois Arts Council Agency, the Cave Canem Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Her work has appeared in numerous venues, including BAX, Mandorla, The &Now Awards, Of Poetry & Protest, Ploughshares, Troubling the Line, and The Best of Fence; and her compositions have been translated into Polish, German, and Spanish. Harris earned degrees in Literature from Yale University and NYU, and a PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago Program for Writers.
The 2018 Offen Poet, Harris is an associate professor of English in the graduate creative writing program at Illinois State University and the Editor of Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora.
See more on her website at durielharris.com.
Dates at Lynden: June 6-June 8
Wednesday, June 6 - 1-4 pm
Thursday, June 7 - 1-4 pm
Friday, June 8 - 1-4 pm (with a reading and reception at 6 pm)
Related Events
Wednesday, June 6 - 7 pm
Reading: Duriel E. Harris
$8 General | $7 Students & Seniors | $6 WPBC Members
FREE for participants in Writing in the Light of Death
This event takes place at Woodland Pattern Book Center, 720 E. Locust St. Milwaukee, WI 53212
Friday, June 8 - 6 pm
Workshop Reading & Celebration
Free
Participants in the workshop will offer a reading of work produced during the week followed by a reception.
This event takes place at the Lynden Sculpture Garden.
Both events are open to the public.
