Sacramento Poetry Center Spring Conference
April 4, 2020
Show Your Appreciation for Our Amazing Conference Faculty and Local Authors by…
Buying Books! Book Table Open 9:30-5:00 @ California Stage
Faculty & Featured Local Authors Will Sign Books at Their Respective Afternoon Readings
9:00 to 10:00
Registration; Coffee and Pastries ~ SPC Main Room
9:30 to 9:45
Conference Welcome ~ California Stage
10:00 to 11:45
Choose Your Workshop!
(Note: NEW Format this year; choose one of three concurrent sessions.
Longer session times = more time to write and share!)
The Ordinary and the Extraordinary
with Judy Halebsky
This workshop considers the ordinary and the extraordinary in poems based on daily life. Sei Shônagon’s Pillow Book,composed mostly of lists and observations, offers an example of a poetry journal with narrative and lyric moments. We’ll look entries from the Pillow Book, written a thousand years ago, and a handful of contemporary poems that offer different approaches to the writing of daily life. The workshop will include doing some of our writing.
Judy Halebsky’s is the author of Tree Line and Sky=Empty, which won the New Issues Poetry Prize. Her new book, Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged), is forthcoming from the University of Arkansas Press. Her poems have been published in APR, Field, Zyzzyva and elsewhere. She directs the low-residency MFA at Dominican University of California and lives in Oakland.
OR
How We Collaborate: Inventing New Work Together
with Maw Shein Win
Find inspiration for your writing from a variety of visual, literary, and audio prompts ranging from word games to collaborative exercises. In this workshop, we will play with language, read poetic texts, and invent new work together. What do we take delight in? How do we transmit the mysterious? By the end of the class, you will leave with an invaluable list of resources and exercises to keep you moving forward in your writing life.
Maw Shein Win is a poet, editor, and educator who lives and teaches in the Bay Area. Her poetry chapbooks are Ruins of a glittering palace (SPA) and Score and Bone (Nomadic Press). Invisible Gifts: Poems was published by Manic D Press in 2018. Maw is the first poet laureate of El Cerrito (2016 – 2018), and her poetry collection Storage Unit for the Spirit House will be published by Omnidawn in 2020.
OR
Engaging the Word
with AndYes
Learn from a slam poetry champion about how to get in touch with the emotion of a work to create a dynamic performance – within this workshop we examine how to speak life into poetry, and how different approaches to speaking your work aloud can shift the very meaning of the piece itself, giving life to different aspects of your work while uniquely engaging your audience.
AndYes is one of the top-50 spoken word artists in the world, having competed in the largest international spoken word contest, the Individual World Poetry Slam, in 2019. He is also the founder and teacher for the professional youth poetry mentorship program, Operation FreeSoul. The Grand Slam Poetry Champion of Sacramento, AndYes is a first-generation Cuban-American poet and runs The Spoken Word Federation, which combines spoken word competition with pro-wrestling vibes.
11:45
Lunch (Provided; Please Let Hard-Working Presenters Eat First!)
Have you wanted a way to publish and share your
chapbook with a group of like-minded individuals? Join Georgina Marie, one of
our Hot Off the Press readers, to learn about the chapbook collective she’s
part of. Georgina will share how it works, so you can start one of your own! Join Georgina for an informal talk and Q&A for 15 minutes in the
Main SPC Room at 12:15 pm.
1:00
Hot Off The Press: Celebrating New Work from Local Authors, Presses and Magazines
Reading and Book Signing ~ California Stage
(See bios on last page)
- Matthew Chronister shares work from Memory Care, hisfirst and just-published chapbook
- Linda Jackson Collins reads from her debut poetry collection, Painting Trees
- Bethanie Humphreys shares work from her 2019 chapbook Dendrochronology and more
- Georgina Marie reads from her two chapbooks, published as part of a Lake County-area chapbook collective
- Enjoy featured poets from the current issue of Tule Review, Sacramento Poetry Center’s long-standing literary journal!
2:00 to 3:45
Choose Your Workshop!
(Note: NEW Format this year; choose one of three concurrent sessions.
Longer session times = more time to write and share!)
Hybridity: Poems that Cross the Line
with MK Chavez
In this workshop, we will explore poems that live in liminal space. Hybrid poetics blur the lines of genre, take liberties with narrative, travel writing, news, and memoir to create new and expansive assemblages. We will read examples of hybrid poems that push past the binary of poetry and prose. Participants will have an opportunity to create a literary chimera of their own.
MK Chavez is the award-winning author of Mothermorphosis and Dear Animal,. Chavez has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, CantoMundo, the Squaw Valley Writers Workshop, and the Napa Valley Writers Conference. She is the curator of Lyrics& Dirges (a month reading series), co-director of the Berkeley Poetry Festival, and a visiting instructor at many colleges including Stanford University, San Francisco State, and Mills College. She is a recipient of an Alameda County Arts Leadership Award and PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award.
OR
Writing as a Healing Art
with Jan Haag
Most writers know that writers’ block is all about fear—of not “doing it right,” of not getting on the page what we imagine in our heads, feeling intimidated by teachers/other writers/authority figures. Simply writing with others in a supportive environment can help heal our angst around writing. Experience the encouraging Amherst Writers & Artists method with Jan Haag in this session. Bring your journal/pen/laptop/tablet and respond to prompts (or not—it’s up to you). You might be surprised by what shows up for you.
Jan Haag facilitates workshops using the Amherst Writers & Artists method, which encourages writers to play on the page and heal their fears about writing. She teaches journalism and creative writing at Sacramento City College and is the author of a book of poems, Companion Spirit. She has written two novels and had poems and essays published in many journals and anthologies. She is also the co-publisher of River Rock Books in Sacramento.
OR
Poetry for the Planet: Celebrating the Earth and Inspiring Environmental Action
with Lucille Lang Day
This workshop will focus on ecopoetry. We will discuss the definition of an ecopoem, what inspires us to write ecopoetry, and the relationship between ecopoetry and environmental activism. During the first part of the workshop, we will examine ecopoems from The Ecopoetry Anthology, Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, and Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California. During the second part of the workshop, participants will receive prompts to choose among in order to generate their own ecopoems.
Bio:
Lucille Lang Day is coeditor of Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California and the author of ten poetry collections and chapbooks, most recently Becoming an Ancestor and Dreaming of Sunflowers: Museum Poems. She is also a coeditor of the poetry anthology Red Indian Road West and the author of two children’s books and a memoir. Her many honors include the Joseph Henry Jackson Award, the Blue Light Poetry Prize, two PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Awards, and ten Pushcart nominations.
4:00 to 5:00
Faculty Reading, Book Signing and Conference Farewell ~ California Stage
Don’t forget to see the next page for all of our
fine Hot of the Press reader bios and more!
Featured Local Authors, Presses and Magazines
Matthew Chronister is from Sacramento, where he works with local youth and writes poetry. He earned a Master’s degree in English at California State University, Sacramento, where he also teaches First Year Composition. His work has appeared in Poetry Now, Suisun Valley Review and 8-West Press. His first collection of poems, Memory Care, is just out from Finishing Line Press.
Painting Trees is Linda Collins’ debut poetry collection. Collins grew up mostly in Louisville, Kentucky, where she worked one summer as a book-shelver for the public library. Her childhood interest in words and writing was piqued by the works of Betty Smith, Louise Fitzhugh, and Anne Frank, where she discovered girl heroines and writers. She studied English Literature in college, but didn’t begin composing poems until her mid-40s, while part of Sacramento’s vibrant writing community. She was an SPC board member and editor of Tule Review.
Bethanie Humphreys is a writer, editor, and mixed-media visual artist. She is a Sacramento Poetry Center board member, SPC Art Gallery curator, Associate Editor for Tule Review, and was Editor-in-Chief of 2015 American River Review. In 2019, Finishing Line Press published her chapbook, Dendrochronology, and her work has appeared in the U.S. and U.K., including: Artemis, Nonbinary Review, and Found Poetry Review. She is a California Certified Naturalist and Amherst Writers and Artists method instructor.
Georgina Marie is a poet from Lake County, Northern California. She was one of three finalists for the 2018-2020 Lake County Poet Laureate term and is involved in her literary community as a supporter of writers, and organizer and participant of poetry events. As part of the Broken Nose Collective, she created her first poetry chapbook, Finding the Roots of Water, in 2018 and completed her second chapbook, Tree Speak, in 2019.
Tule Review is the all-poetry literary journal
of the Sacramento Poetry Center. Tule Review publishes once a year.
The journal showcases new writers and award winners from the region and across
the nation. The staff has nominated several of its published poets for the
Pushcart Prize. Initially the journal was printed in newsprint, staple
bound, and distributed locally. Over the years, Tule has
grown to a heftier, beautifully designed, perfect-bound format, with juried art
and a full color cover.
The spirit of Tule Review, however,
has not changed. Tule Review acceptspoetry and artwork
submissions via Submittable; find submission guidelines and deadlines at
https://spcsacramentopoetrycenter.submittable.com/submit.
If you have trouble with Submitting, please email support@submittable.com. You can also
call Submittable for assistance: 855.467.8264.
