Caffe Lena Poetry Festival 2009

	Caffe Lena Poetry Festival 2009 Saturday, Apr 11 Starts at noon and runs through the evening

Workshops

1 to 2 PM

Miriam Axel-Lute - Poetry Performance
As soon as you step up to an open mic, you have become a performer as well as a writer. How do you reach an audience with something as complex as a poem, on the first try? We'll cover three steps to good poetry performance. Please bring a short (under 40 lines, roughly) poem or piece of a poem (yours or someone else's) to practice with.

Barbara Ungar - Poetry in Performance, Poetry on the Page
Some of us excel at reading our work aloud, but find that on the page, the work is less effective. Others write beautifully for the page, but do not do justice to the work in performance. This workshop will attempt to address both sides of the coin, improving both skills. Please bring at least one poem to perform aloud, and to have the group critique on the page. Please bring with you either 6-12 copies of your poem, or plenty of change for the copy machine at the library.

3 to 4 PM

Steven Huff - Consider the Line Break
Often line breaks are a poet's last consideration. Yet to treat line breaks arbitrarily may mean the poem loses shades of meaning. In this workshop we will examine four simple lines in a variety of breaks, with various emphases and foci. If you bring a poem to the workshop, you will have a chance to rework your line breaks, which may change the direction of the poem, or carry it into unexpected drafts.

Jordan Smith - Honoring & Disguising the Autobiographical Impulse
This workshop will be a discussion of how to both honor and disguise the autobiographical impulse in poetry. Participants should bring a noteboook (or whatever they are comfortable using for writing). We'll do a couple of brief exercises designed to investigate the gray area between the actual and the represented self. The instructor is Jordan Smith, author of five books of poetry and professor of English at Union College.

5 to 6 PM

Joseph Bruchac - Editing, Feedback & Ideas for Generating New Work
Attendees are encouraged to bring in one or two of their poems in progress--to be read and discussed in the workshop. Attention will be given to work from each person in the group. The workshop will also include at least one writing exercise, as well as further suggestions for generating writing.

Michael Brown - Critic! Using the Good to Drive Out the Bad Without Chasing People Away
Critic! It can be the ultimate insult, but if you run a venue, publish a journal or just hang out with poets, there are many ways to use the good to drive out the bad without chasing people away. Writing reviews, responding to readers and performers, and choosing poems for publication should be dedicated to poetry first. Here’s how….