Edwina Trentham
“Losing Heart, Finding Voice: Writing in Response to Despair”
A One-Day Workshop with Edwina Trentham
Saturday, November 19, 2011: 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM
Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. —Gerard Manley Hopkins
We all face times when life seems overwhelming, when sorrow engulfs us, when we see no way out of despair. Not surprisingly, many poets have written powerfully about facing loss and despair, and their work has been an enormous source of comfort and inspiration to others. In this workshop, we will read and discuss the work of W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Elizabeth Bishop, Lucille Clifton, Stephen Dobyns, Tess Gallagher, Robert Lowell, James Wright, and others. We will also try our hand at writing poems that explore grief and loss, using a series of exercises. Don’t despair! This will not be a time of sorrow and grieving, but a time of exploration and the joy of reading the works of others who speak to us of our own pain. I will be sending an exercise ahead of time to participants, as well as providing a handout of poems, and hopefully participants will send suggestions for poems to add to that handout. Participants will bring a potluck dish to share. Coffee, tea, and cookies will be provided. The workshop is limited to twelve participants, and the cost is $100.00. Edwina Trentham is a Professor of English at Asnuntuck Community College in Enfield, Connecticut, where she teaches English and creative writing and also edits the poetry journal, Freshwater, whichshe founded andwhich celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2009. She was also a Visiting Instructor in the Graduate Liberal Studies Program at Wesleyan University from 1988 through 2005. She has been a fellow at Yaddo and has published her work in a number of periodicals and anthologies. Her poetry has won many awards, including honorable mention in the 2004 Sunken Garden Poetry Festival National Competition, and she has given readings and workshops throughout Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York. A collection of her poetry, Stumbling into the Light, was published by Antrim House in 2004, and she was a featured reader at the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival in June 2005. She won a 2010 Solo Writers Fellowship awarded by the Greater Hartford Arts Council and the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, and spent two weeks in a cabin in the woods outside Saratoga Springs writing a new chapbook. For additional information on Stumbling into the Light, go to Antrim House Books. |
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