2023 Summer Workshops
We live in a time of always more, always faster, where what’s new insists on itself as what’s most important. Yet outside this frenzy are the types of questions that will guide our week together: Why are we here? How do we live knowing our lives are finite? What does it mean to be good? The long history of human engagement with these ideas, the striving after answers that might speak to our present concerns, is vibrantly recorded in religious writing and practices, as well as in the work of contemporary poets who’ve grappled with these ideas and texts. This generative workshop is open to writers of all levels, of all faiths or none, and will be a blend of close reading, spirited exchange, guided writing exercises, and discussions of how craft can help us embody and communicate even the most abstract ideas. Participants should arrive ready to write and expect to leave with a healthy set of new drafts, as well as the seeds of future poems.
Biography
Jessica Jacobs is the author of Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going, winner of the Devil’s Kitchen and Goldie Awards, and Pelvis with Distance, winner of the New Mexico Book Award and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Chapbook Editor for Beloit Poetry Journal, she co-authored Write It! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire with her wife Nickole Brown. Her collection in conversation with Genesis will be out from Four Way Books in 2024.