Poetry as Pluralistic Process
A workshop with writer-in-residence Cole Swensen.
Saturday, October 11, 1-5 pm and Sunday, October 12, 10 am-12 noon.
Presented in collaboration with Woodland Pattern Book Center
Photo: Laird Hunt
Fee: $65 general public / $60 for members of Lynden or Woodland Pattern (one discount only)
Lynden Sculpture Garden and the Woodland Pattern Book Center offer a two-day workshop at Lynden with poet and writer-in-residence Cole Swensen. In addition to the workshop, Swensen will offer a closing reading at Lynden on October 12 at 2 pm.
This workshop will work both with and against the sculpture garden; on the one hand, it will attempt to engage the anchored quality of sculpture, and, on the other hand, will harness the energy of continual change that is inherent to any garden. We will engage these two opposing principles through a focus on targeted process. Beginning with three varied ekphrastic exercises, we’ll treat those initial results as raw material to be reframed, reworked, and reconstituted through a dense series of revisionary procedures, some collaborative, some constraint-based, some intensively individual, but all rooted in the conviction that radical transformation can be occasioned by repeated encounters with a work or works of art.
About Cole Swensen
Cole Swensen is a poet whose fifteen books of poetry often respond to or incorporate elements or works of visual art; recent books address 17th century French baroque gardens and the window paintings of Pierre Bonnard, while an upcoming book is based on landscapes seen from train windows accompanied by photographs of the same. Her books have won the SF State Poetry Center Book Award, the Iowa Poetry Prize, and the National Poetry Series and have been finalists twice for the LA Times Book Award and once for the National Book Award. She teaches at Brown University and divides her time between Providence, Rhode Island and Paris, France.
Related Events
Sunday, October 12, 2014 at 2 pm
Closing Reading: Cole Swensen
Fee: $8 general / $7 students & seniors / $6 members; free for workshop participants
This event takes place at Lynden Sculpture Garden and is open to the public. For more information, click here.
