HCA Writing Program
Writing Workshop with Poet, Didi Jackson
March 22 & 23 | 10:00am–1:00pm
Hoffman Center for the Arts | 594 Laneda Avenue | Manzanita
Tuition: $250
Infinite Art of Poetry
This is a two-day generative writing workshop, focusing on a range of expression from metaphor to ekphrastic poetry.
Participants will be given prompts to inspire writing in response to discussion and a selection of poems and texts.
Materials needed: pen and journal
Scholarships are available for this workshop.
For more information on scholarships, please inquire here.
Saturday’s Workshop Focus:
Arguably, metaphor is the hardest working poetic element and therefore (to me!) the most exciting. Edward Hirsch summarizes Percy Bysshe Shelly’s thoughts on metaphor when he states: “metaphors create new thoughts and thus revitalize language.” Ted Cohen suggests that one of the main points of metaphor is “the achievement of intimacy.” And Jane Hirschfield sees “metaphor as a tool to open up new worlds of understanding” comparing it to a “handle on a door” that allows access to new perspectives.” In this workshop, we will explore several poems in which the poet has created a memorable metaphor. We will discuss what makes it memorable, why it becomes memorable, how this element of figuration functions within the world of the poem, and what we can learn from it for our own writing. Finally, we will write a draft of a poem with special focus on the use of (memorable) metaphor.
Sunday’s Workshop Focus:
William Blake said that poetry and art are ways to converse with paradise. So, it is no wonder that these two forms intersect and enhance one another in his work and in the poetry of so many others. In this workshop we will look at the unique relationship between visual art and poetry by closely reading several examples of ekphrasis (poetry engaging with visual art) and focusing on the various ways a poem might enter into a dialogue with a piece of art. Luckily, the tradition of poems engaging in some sort of conversation with visual works of art (be it paintings, sculpture, media installations, etc.) is still alive and well today in the works of such poets at Natasha Trethewey, Diane Seuss, Steve Gehrke, Yusef Komunyakaa, Kevin Young, Victoria Chang, and many others. I will share my favorite examples and then we will write our own drafts of poems utilizing and experimenting with some of the shared techniques discussed earlier in the workshop. No prior knowledge of art or art history is needed.
About Didi Jackson
Didi Jackson is the author of the poetry collections My Infinity (2024) and Moon Jar (2020). Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Bomb, The New Yorker, and Oxford American among other journals and magazines. She has had poems selected for Best American Poetry, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day, The Slow Down with Tracy K. Smith, and Together in Sudden Strangeness: America’s Poets Respond to the Pandemic. She is the recipient of the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. She is a Dean’s Faculty Fellow at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where she teaches creative writing. Most recently she completed her certification as a Tennessee Naturalist.
Visit Didi Jackson’s website for more information.
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Didi Jackson will present an author reading and book signing on Friday, March 21st, from 7:30-9:00 pm in the HCA Main Room.
To register for the author reading, please
visit the event page for more details.
Please direct any questions about the workshop or author reading event to:
[email protected]
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March 22, 2025
10:00 am - 1:00 pm
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March 23, 2025
10:00 am - 1:00 pm
March 22, 23-Writing Workshop with Poet, Didi Jackson-Main Room
Address:
594 Laneda Avenue, Manzanita, Oregon, 97130, United States
Description:
Situated on the main street in Manzanita just a few blocks west of Highway 101, the Hoffman Center is located across the street from the North Tillamook Library.
