** Sign up for this workshop by May 17 and receive a 10% discount! CMCA members also receive a 10% discount on all workshops.
The Poetry of Art and the Art of Poetry
Saturday, June 10, 2023
9:30 am – 5 pm
What is this workshop about, you might ask. How is art like poetry, and poetry like art? One is all color and image, composition, line and space. The other is words and metaphor, line and space. And both are compositions.
Wait !! I just wrote ‘line and space’ twice. That should be a clue.
Ellen Goldsmith has written four books of poetry, taught poetry out of her home and in various settings here in Maine. She possesses a keen love of both poetic practice and the work of many contemporary and historic poets over the globe. In her reading of others’ work she looks carefully at how the poem is constructed as well as the content. And content can be enhanced or even driven, I’d say, by the way the poem appears on the page. Line and space. The shape of the poem on the page. Consider, for example the following poem which we’ll discuss in the workshop:
Obligations 2 by Layli Long Soldier
As we
embrace resist
the future the present the past
we work we struggle we begin we fail
to understand to find to unbraid to accept to question
the grief the grief the grief the grief
we shift we wield we bury
into light as ash
across our faces
Sandy Weisman has been an artist for decades as well. Her areas of expertise include textiles, printmaking, collage, and artist books. She has a keen love of materials, color artistic process and the work of many contemporary and historic artists – their use of composition, line, light and shadow to render meaning. Consider this collage:
Remember that clue – line and space! And there’s so much more.
In fact, both Ellen and Sandy reach for meaning, both personal universal, in artists’ and poets’ works. They investigate the many tools used by artists and writers use to deepen meaning.
We – Ellen and Sandy – think art and poetry have a great deal in common: symbols, metaphors, a condensing of ideas into line, shapes, color, imagery as well as intention and meaning. We have considered those tools and how to make them available to others.
In The Art of Poetry and Poetry of Art we’ll explore color, space, line, shapes, and metaphor. We want those who join us to have fun. If you’re more of a writer, we want you to use your skills to make art, knowing that you will have almost as many choices in your tool kit as a writer, as you will find as an artist. And if you’re more of an artist, you will completely get to use all your choices to create word play and poetry on the open page. We will mix paints, make our own colored papers to use and share, draw and collage, and write new poems together.
Book of Hours. Accordion binding
Please come and join us for a day of fun and experimentation. Leave with a couple of new poems in progress and a work of art!
To register, go to www.26splitrockcove.com/workshops.