Summer 2008 Creative Writing Workshops for poets, writers & others from all walks of life
at the Philadelphia Shambhala Meditation Center
2030 Sansom Street—3rd floor
Philadelphia, PA 19103
Tuesday nights 7:00-9:30 p.m. July 15, 29, August 5 and 19 and an open reading Augsut 26th 8:00-9:30 p.m.
Taught by Jeffrey Ethan Lee, Ph.D., MFA
Senior Poetry Editor for Many Mountains Moving Press
http://mmminc.orgCost: $25 for any one workshop. ($20 for members, single parents, and college students).
Small Poetry/Prose Workshops on the spontaneous voice, with an emphasis on language poetry/poetics exercises and games. (Maximum number = 12).
The freewriting game is designed to tap into the spontaneous voice of each writer.
You need to be able to write in a voice that is truly yours in your spontaneous natural form. You might think this would come naturally to everyone, but when people start writing they often think they have to “be literary” or something other than who what they are.
Free-writing is a way to practice getting inspiration. That may sound like a paradox, but inspiration comes in many forms. You don’t have to feel like “lightning struck.” This is very rare, and most writers work very hard on revision.
There really is something that is called inspiration, but it may just feel like excitement, or it could be a sense of pressure, or it could feel like an ecstatic moment. No matter how it works for you, it will work better if you get ready for it. The more often you can get your mind into that space where you feel free, the more powerful your experience will be. The more often that you write, the more likely it is that you will get to that deeper freedom where you can say what you really need to say.
This exercise is designed to help people overcome their inhibitions and doubts about their writing. It is also great fun and may be very stimulating and challenging.
Click here for details on the workshop frewriting game. Still have questions? Send e-mail to jeffreyethan@att.net.
Please RSVP!
Thanks.
Jeffrey Ethan Lee, Senior Poetry Editor, Many Mountains Moving
Lee studied with Sharon Olds, Galway Kinnell, Cornelius Eady and Shaid Ali at NYU, earning an MFA degree several years after a degree in British Romanticism, also from NYU. Lee's poetry book, identity papers, a 2006 Colorado Book Award finalist, is available from Ghost Road Press. Visit http://www.identitypapers.org. His first full-length poetry book, invisible sister was published by Many Mountains Moving Press, 2004. Lee won the 2002 Sow's Ear Poetry Chapbook prize ($1,000) for The Sylf (2003), created identity papers for Drimala Records, published Strangers in a Homeland (chapbook with Ashland Poetry Press, 2001), and published hundreds of poems, stories and essays in Many Mountains Moving, Xconnect, Crab Orchard Review, Crazyhorse, Crosscurrents, Drexel Online Journal, Green Mountain Review, Washington Square. He taught creative writing at University of Northern Colorado 2002-2007. He has a Ph.D. in British Romanticism and an MFA from NYU. His cv is here.