In this five-day workshop, award-winning poet and novelist Lauren Wolk will guide students to create work that is complex, layered, and compelling. Students may choose to respond to prompts and assignments through poetry, prose, or both. Each day will focus on a different method for producing work that is interesting, textured, and evocative. Mornings (9am to noon) will be devoted to instruction, afternoons to independent work and reflection (and exploring the Cape). There will be ample opportunity for students to share their work during the course of the week.

Mid-week, each student will be provided with a landscape by one of the painters in a concurrent workshop (Painting the Landscape from Memory…With a Twist!) and will respond to the image through writing. Likewise, each writer will provide an artist with a landscape poem or passage to use as inspiration for a painting. At week’s end we will have brunch prepared by our in-house chef Joe Cizynski, exhibit the paintings and read the poems that result from this ekphrastic exchange.

Instruction will focus on:

Writing without a Map
Showing instead of Telling
Igniting the Senses
Writing Lush and Writing Lean
Dialogue and Description
Setting as Character

*If you are traveling and need accommodations, we recommend the Captain Farris House Bed & Breakfast located across the street from the Cultural Center at 308 Old Main Street, South Yarmouth. Please let them know that you will be registering for our Writing the Onion: Creating Layers in Poetry & Prose Workshop. You may visit their website by clicking here.