A Scablands Lit Writing Workshop
Thursday, July 21 // 2-5 PM
"This felt sense at seeing the rose extends, because light in the DNA of my cells receives light frequencies of the flower as ahologram." - Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, from “Hello, the Roses”
What is the architecture of the imagination? What gives it shape, and how are its doors and exits made? When does one sense become another? What does confusion and disorientation between them yield? We’ll explore these questions and more in Manito Park and Botanical Gardens through writing and simple movement exercises aimed at exploring the park’s architecture, plant conservatory, and its former life as a zoo. We’ll learn about love from the lost, about dying from plant life, and about living from architecture. This workshop is for anyone wishing to explore their sense of creative motion and direction in the world, from writers, artists, and musicians to farriers, chefs, scientists, and librarians (or any hybrid of anything).
This workshop might be described as a joke that begins with the punchline, or as the solar-system enactment/bar-closing scene from Werckmeister Harmonies. The workshop and variations of it developed from an interest in the meeting points of landscape, imagination, and language. These experiments have been happening irregularly since 2009.
Takes place at Gaiser Conservatory @ Manito Park. $40. Register online.
MELANIE NOEL is the author of The Monarchs (Stockport Flats, 2013). Her poems have also appeared in Thermos, Spiral Orb, Filter, Weekday, The Volta, and The Arcadia Project. She’s written poems for installations and as live scores for short films. She was a co-curator of the dance, music and poetry series APOSTROPHE, and curated Impala, a reading series that took place in her grandmother’s car. She’s taught classes in woods & parks, as well as schools, hospitals, and community centers. She has an MA in Education from Antioch and an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She’s also a gardener and lived in Spokane from 1986-1992. More here at www.lovepossum.com.