Description
How does tactile, sensory play enliven a poem-making practice?
In this experimental workshop with poet, editor and teacher, Sheryda Warrener, you’ll layer, collide, disrupt, and juxtapose visual fragments as a way to prime the mind for poem-making. To inspire your practice, Sheryda will share examples of contemporary collage, as well as strategies to promote spontaneity, intuition, and imaginative leaps.
You’ll make two poems: one using your assemblage as a generative prompt, and another by selecting lines from books at random to compose a mystical textual collage.
We’ll also be seeking inspiration from the following texts:
- Extraordinary Things to Cut Out and Collage, by Maria Rivan
- The Work of Art, by Adam Moss
- Ordinary Beast, by Nicole Sealey
- Spontaneous Particulars, by Susan Howe (title inspiration)
Books will be available to purchase!
This workshop is open to writers and artists at all levels of experience. Materials will be provided.
To support our non-profit programming and to help us cover costs, this workshop is $10 . If you are experiencing barriers to attend, please reach out over email — we are happy to provide you with one of our reserved free-by-donation tickets.
We have very limited seating and spots go quickly, so please reserve your place here!
More about the facilitator:
Sheryda Warrener is the author of the poetry collections Hard Feelings, Floating Is Everything, and most recently, Test Piece, which was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Prize. She is a lecturer in the School of Creative Writing at UBC, and is the creator of The Provocation Collection, a series of material prompts for writers designed in collaboration with artists.
More about Upstart & Crow:
Upstart & Crow is a not-for-profit creative studio and literary incubator that champions writers, readers and stories, and the role they play in shaping our lives. We develop original programs, support artists and revel in creative projects focused on Literature In Translation / Climate Solutions / Poetry / Civic Dialogue / Community & Skills Building … all with the aim of elevating the role of literature and storytelling in our lives. Find us on Granville Island, Gibsons and online at upstartandcrow.com.
Accessibility:
The main studio of our shop is accessible for folks with mobility aids. There is a washroom on the main floor available for attendees.
Questions: hello[at]upstartandcrow.com.
Test Piece
FINALIST FOR THE 2023 DOROTHY LIVESAY POETRY PRIZE
Ways of Seeing meets Mary Ruefle in these visual-art-inflected poems
Though they started from Sheryda Warrener’s impulse to see herself more clearly, the poems in Test Piece ended up becoming more expansive meditations on seeing and vision. They engage with the process and practice of art-making, and specifically with abstract minimalist works like those by Eva Hesse, Anne Truitt, Ruth Asawa, and Agnes Martin.
Not-seeing/not-knowing is a motif, as is weave, grid, pattern, rhythm of interiors, domestic life. These poems are informed by collage, by the act of bringing images and lines together. With their echoes and reverberations (hand, mirror, body, clear, form, face), a greater complexity is revealed.
Floating is Everything
Sheryda Warrener’s second poetry collection touches on the illusion of remaining grounded and a sense of belonging. A retired cosmonaut returns from a record-breaking 438 days in space and attempts to re-immerse himself in the world. One speaker considers reinvention from the top floor of the World’s Tallest building; another, our complicated future from Reykjavik, post-eruption of Eyjafjallaj�kull. Confessions and aspirations suspend in air. Ghosts float in and out; inheritance and connection are called into question. Morrissey, Cindy Sherman, and Pancho Barnes make cameo appearances. Influence and personal lineage are traced back to the Vikings, demoted Pluto, artists frequenting a Parisian bar. One speaker confides: “Yes, she’s longing to be elsewhere. Just past the sun deck there’s something invisible worth having.” In Floating is Everything, a resolution lies nearly always out of reach.
