PoetryFest 2019

PoetryFest Workshops with
Andrea Hollander and John Brehm
Saturday and Sunday, March 16-17
9:30 a.m. to 12:30 pm
Tuition: $165

The Manzanita Writers’ Series will host a weekend of poetry workshops and readings on March 15-17, 2019, featuring award-winning poets Andrea Hollander and John Brehm.

The event kicks off at the Hoffman Center for the Arts at 7 pm Friday evening, with a welcome reception for registered participants. Workshops will be held from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm on Saturday and Sunday giving participants the opportunity to work with both teachers.

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTIONS

Genie in a Bottle, Andrea Hollander
In talking about the essence of good poetry, Richard Wilbur claimed that the power of the genie comes from the very fact of being trapped inside a bottle. All successful poems contain an underlying structure that gives them solidity, stature. Sometimes such structure is obvious (sonnet, ghazal, villanelle), but even successful free verse poems, which most of us write, are dependent upon form. We will scrutinize a variety of masterful poems in order to better recognize the framework that holds each of them together, our goal being to create poems of such steadfast strength ourselves.

Andrea Hollander is the author of five full-length poetry collections and the recipient of numerous awards, including two Pushcart Prizes, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, an Oregon Literary Fellowship and many others.  Her collection Landscape with Female Figure: New & Selected Poems, 1982 – 2012 was a finalist for the 2014 Oregon Book Award. For twenty-two years Hollander served as Writer-in-Residence at Lyon College. After moving to Portland, Oregon, she taught at The Attic Institute and Mountain Writers Series for six years before founding the Ambassador Writing Seminars. Her website is andreahollander.net.

The Poetry of Praise, John Brehm
In this workshop we’ll focus on reading and writing poems that draw on one of humankind’s most enduring and life-giving impulses: to praise, to honor, to pay homage, to exalt. We’ll use prompts as well as examples from Gerard Manly Hopkins, Pablo Neruda, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Hass, Denise Levertov, A.R. Ammons, Lucille Clifton, Mark Doty, Ellen Bass, and others, to cultivate the power of praise in our own work.

John Brehm is the author of Sea of Faith and Help Is on the Way. He is the associate editor for The Oxford Book of American Poetry and the editor of The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Gulf Coast, New Ohio Review, The Writer’s Almanac, The Best American Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies. He teaches for Mountain Writers Series and Literary Arts in Portland and for The Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, Colorado. His website is johnbrehmpoet.com.

From 7 to 9 pm on Saturday, Hollander and Brehm will give a short reading at the Hoffman Center for the Arts, followed by a sale of their books and a PoetryFest participant open mic.

PoetryFest registration for the Hollander and Brehm workshops opens February 1. Tuition is $165. Registration is limited to the first 20 people who register.

Oregon Poet Laureate Kim Stafford will be leading a free workshop at the Library on Saturday, March 16th.  The free workshop is full, however you can get on a waiting list by emailing [email protected].  In addition, the Library is sponsoring Kim Stafford’s poetry reading at the Hoffman Center at 4:30 pm.

Registration for the free Kim Stafford workshop at the North Tillamook Library is limited to 24 people.  Registrants for the paid workshops must also register separately for the Stafford workshop.


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  • Reception for Participants and Teachers
     March 15, 2019
     7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
  • Readings with Andrea Hollander and John Brehm Followed by Participant Open Mic
     March 16, 2019
     7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
  • Saturday Workshops
     March 16, 2019
     9:30 am - 12:30 pm
  • Sunday Workshops
     March 17, 2019
     9:30 am - 12:30 pm

A weekend of workshops and readings devoted to poetry.