Upcoming Workshops

Poetry Symposium 2024

Join us for our very first Poetry Symposium! We're putting on a full day of poetry workshops with two of the region's leading poetry instructors, Marlanda Dekine and Destiny Hemphill. Between workshops, participants will have a total of an hour of free writing time. We'll wrap the day up with a Q&A session with staff from Hub City Press. Lunch will be included with registration.

Registration: $250

Sign up today!

West Wing Conference Room (in the art museum building)
Chapman Cultural Center

Schedule:

9:30AM - Registration and Welcome
10AM - Workshop with Marlanda Dekine
11:30AM - Writing Break
12PM - Lunch (provided)
1 PM - Workshop with Destiny Hemphill
2:30 PM - Writing Break
3 PM - Publishing Q&A with Hub City Press

Going to See Again & Again & Again...On Revision
Marlanda Dekine

The Latin etymology of “revision” means to go to see again. At first glance, a single line of your poem may not make meaning. It may make a sound or an image, but it does not ring out meaningfully in the overall work. What is that line saying or not saying weeks or months later? When we experience a life change, we mutate, transform, and even die to parts of ourselves. We are forced to find or allow new meaning to make sense of our surroundings. Our imaginations remake themselves, and the images we have held within our bodies re-enter and ask for renewed attention. Our poems do this, too. Together, we will go to our poems to see anew. We will listen to what our writing wants from us, letting die what needs to die, and bringing to life what begs to live, fresh and new. Bring 2-4 original poems you like but haven’t read in a few months or a year. I’ll bring a few of my favorite poems, too.

When it Hurts So Bad: Pain, Ritual, and Procedural Poetics
Destiny Hemphill

In this workshop, we will consider procedural poetics as pathway to generate poetry in moments where deep embodied or psychic pain leaves us feeling languageless. In so doing, we will remove the sometimes-burdensome expectation of inspiration to create and remember the social and political dimensions of language by engaging source material. This workshop will begin by giving an overview of ways to conceptualize procedural poetics. From there, we will engage examples of procedural poetics (possible poets include M. Nourbese Philip, Claire Wahmanholm, Layli Long Soldier, and /or Solmaz Sharif). We’ll close by engaging a collaborative procedure to generate poetry and discussing ways that the procedure can be adapted outside of workshop. Each student should bring a book of poetry from their personal collection.

Workshop Leaders

Marlanda Dekine, LMSW, MFA, (she/her) is a creative social worker and the CEO & Founder of {unnamed} LLC. Dekine is a graduate of Furman University (BA in Psychology), the University of South Carolina (Master of Social Work), and Converse University (Master of Fine Arts in Poetry). Her collection of poems, Thresh & Hold, won the 2021 New Southern Voices Poetry Prize. Her poems have been set to music and premiered across the Eastern United States. She is the creator of i am from a punch & a kiss, a multimedia book/mixtape project, SOUL: An Ancestor Workshop, and Speaking Down Barriers.

Destiny Hemphill (she/her) is a chronically ill ritual worker and poet, living on the unceded territory of the Eno-Occaneechi band of the Saponi Nation (Durham, NC). A recipient of fellowships from Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program, Callaloo, Tin House, and Kenyon Review's Writers Workshop, she is the author of the poetry collection motherworld: a devotional for the alter-life (Action Books, 2023), a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and Publishing Triangle's Audre Lorde Prize. Her work has also been featured in Poetry Magazine, Southern Cultures, and the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day series. She served as a 2021-2022 Poetry Coalition Fellow, 2022-2023 Kenan Visiting Writer in Poetry at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. and 2023-2024 Tin House Reading Fellow.