Workshops and Panels

Click here for brief Biographical Sketches of Presenters

9:30 am - 11:30 am Workshops

Pre-registration is required.

Material Metaphors: Using Man-Made Things as Metaphors for Natural Ones with Robert Carnevale, poet and poetics instructor.
Enrollment is limited.

Mark Doty’s poem “Difference” unfurls a luxuriant series of metaphors for individual jellyfish: it likens one to “a troubled parasol.” In this ancient and common, but still striking kind of metaphor, a writer enlists manmade objects in the wording of living creatures, places, or natural phenomena and of how we respond to them. Beginning with examples from Doty and earlier writers, we will then make up our own.

Blues Poetics: from Lyrics to Verse with Jared Harel, poet and Centenary College poetry instructor.
Enrollment is limited.

This workshop will investigate the unique connection between popular American music and American poetry. We will hear, read, and analyze work by poets such as Langston Hughes, William Carlos Williams, Terrance Hayes, and others whose work has been inspired by such genres as Jazz, Blues, Pop and Rap. Then, we will discuss ways to heighten musicality in our own work, with special attention paid to issues of cadence, repetition and tone.

  
Panels

The Art of Poetry and the Poetry of Art: Ekphrasis in the Contemporary Poem
Burt Kimmelman, NJIT, poet and scholar
Basil King, poet and artist
Corinne Robins, Pratt Institute, poet and art historian
Michael Heller, poet and writer
Mark Lamoureux, CUNY, poet and publisher of Cy Gist Press
Therese Halscheid, poet and writer

Resources and Publication Options
Peter Murphy, local poetry organizer and poet
Melissa Hotchkiss,  co-editor of Barrow Street, teacher, poet
Laura McCullough, Brookdale CC, poet
Ken Ronkowitz, Passaic County CC, poet and online publisher
Mark Tursi, editor of Double Room, publisher of Apostrophe Books

2:30 pm - 4:30 pm  Workshops and Panels

Workshops: Pre-registration is required.

Practicing Poetry with Sally Dawidoff, NY poet and teacher.
Enrollment is limited.
Writers who are new to poetry workshops are encouraged to register. All are welcome, including those new to workshops. Please bring 13 copies of one of your own poems.

How to Understand a Poem: taking the mystery out of contemporary poetry with Laura McCullough
Enrollment is limited.
Learn how to not simply explicate poems, but also to understand the writerly craft elements that poets employ, how they control their effects, strategies, and more. Using examples by noted poets such as Doty,  Komunyakaa, Hoagland, and James Wright, we will heighten our enjoyment of the poems themselves and interrogate how apprentice writers can employ similar skills and aesthetics awareness in their own work.

Panels

Poetics of Place: New Jersey, the West, and Other Habitats of the Mind
Angela Elliott, Centenary College Professor and Poet-in-Residence
Betsy Andrews, poet
Marcella Durand, poet
Adele Kenny, poet
Madeline Tiger, poet
BJ Ward, poet, Warren County CC faculty

Experimenting with Forms
Laura Hinton,  CUNY, poet, critic, and publisher
“Mourning and Multi-Media Poetics”
Lorna Blake, poet, teacher, and editor Melissa Hotchkiss, co-editor of Barrow Street, teacher, poet
Kristin Prevallet, poet, Institute for Writing Studies, St John's University, “We Sit Like Hot Stones: The Performance of Mourning”
Mark Tursi, editor of Double Room (prose poem journal), publisher of Apostrophe Books
Tiphanie Yanique, Drew University, Asst. Professor of Creative Writing and Literature; prose poetry; performance
  
  
Poetry and Translation: Bridging the Discontinuities
Edward Foster, editor of Talisman, co-ed. of Contemporary Turkish Studies, poet, essayist, History Professor and Assoc. Dean at the Stevens Institute of Technology.
Carlos Hernandez Peña, bi-lingual writer, editor, and reading series organizer 
Ravi Shankar, poet, Assoc. Professor, editor of Drunkenboat.com and a Norton anthology of Asian and Middle Eastern poetry
Paul Sohar, poet, translator of Hungarian poetry    
Mark Weiss, poet, translator, and editor of Across the Line / Al otro lado: The Poetry of Baja California and The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry.