CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP W/ Lorna Dee Cervantes at MALCS Conference, UCSB, July 18-20!

CFP: MALCS Creative Writing Workshop – ECOPOETICS: The Creative/Critical Response

June 6th, 2012 CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social calls for participation in the Creative Writing Workshop with Lorna Dee Cervantes at the 2012 MALCS Summer Institute at University of California, Santa Barbara, July 18-21, 2012.
DEADLINE: Postmark June 15, 2012

WHAT: Creative Writing from inception to publication with former professor and Director of Creative Writing, Lorna Dee Cervantes!

ECOPOETICS: The Creative/Critical Response is a Xicana creative writing workshop designed to be open to all levels, from no experience to very experienced. Writers of all genres and persuasions are invited to attend as what we will cover may apply to all types of writing. Learn how to go from no poems to a full-length manuscript in two days. Bilingual (Spanish) writers welcome. Please bring copies of one poem or short prose piece for workshopping with the group along with whatever we generate in class. Besides workshopping we may even find time to do a bit of works hopping.

This intensive workshop will be divided into four distinct phases of the creative/critical process: GENERATION, SELECTION, Re-VISION, and CRITICAL EVALUATION. We will participate in exercises designed to match each phase of the process We should come away with at least 5 new poems and a sense of our own patterns and patterning, a new toolbox of techniques and methods, a new confidence and playfulness, a new sense of our own strengths and weaknesses as writers, and maybe even become acquainted with our own inner critic as well as become accustomed to the sound of our voice as well as our own individual "Voice" as "Scribe." We'll also cover the nuts and bolts of "Po'Biz" such as how to prepare and edit a manuscript for submission, how to find publishers, how to maintain the inspiration (breath) for sustaining a work or book over time. How to perform our work in "Real Time". How and when to detach ourselves from our work and voice. How to criticize another writer's work. How to discover and foster a community of feminist writers — maybe even how to support, start and develop our own publishing resources and performance venues.

This workshop respects all and expects such from participants. Expect diversity. Expect to learn how to pleasure yourself - so to speak. Expect work.

This Creative Writing Workshop follows the spirit and mission of MALCS; its expressed purpose is to identify and develop creative writers for publication in Chicana/Latina Studies. Participants bring their work-in-progress and read and comment on the material of the other writers before and during the workshop within the context of Chicana/Latina feminist values: humility, collaboration, community involvement and justice. Attending both two-hour sessions (the first on Weds. July 18, and the second on Friday July 20) is required.

(Lorna Dee Cervantes will also be available for private manuscript consultation. Send hardcopy of manuscript.)

One Creative Writing Workshop will be offered this summer:
1) ECOPOETICS: The Creative/Critical Response, A Creative Writing Workshop, facilitated by Lorna Dee Cervantes, former editor/publisher of MANGO & RED DIRT, former Associate Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at CU Boulder.

WHEN: July 18 at 4:00-6:00 p.m. and July 20 at 8:00-10:00 a.m.
Participants may arrive on Tuesday, July 18, but must contact the Site Committee to arrange housing.

WHY: A rare opportunity to study with an award-winning and critically acclaimed Xicana poet, Lorna Dee Cervantes: publisher (Sandra Cisneros, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Alberto Rios, Victor Martinez, Sherman Alexie, Ray Gonzalez, Jose Antonio Burciaga, Luis Omar Salinas, ronnie burk, ...) and professor (Luis Alberto Urrea, Haas Mroue, Alan Gilbert, Simone Muench, Kristin Prevallet, Michael Robbins, Cody Todd, ....) with over 35 years of experience.

WHO: We encourage applications from writers at all levels, including tenured or mid-career professors.

HOW MANY: The workshop has space for 12 participants, who must register for the Summer Institute and be current MALCS members.

FINE PRINT: Acknowledge the labor of others.

HOW TO APPLY: ECOPOETICS: The Creative/Critical Response, A Creative Writing Workshop

DEADLINE: Postmark June 15, 2012.

WHERE: Postal mail documents to

Lorna Dee Cervantes
3181 Mission Street, PMB 16
San Francisco, CA 94110

WHAT TO SEND: Please submit a cover letter describing your experience as a writer, your contact information, and no more than 10 pages of creative writing, typed and double-spaced. Please identify all work-in-progress or published pieces. (Books welcome!)

Also send via email.

 EMAIL: Send the same materials in PDF to (LornaDeeCervantes) at (me) to the usual commercial suffix by June 15, 2012.

To register for the MALCS (Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social) Summer Institute 2012 "Todos Somos Arizona: Confronting the Attack On Difference" at UC Santa Barbara, July 18-21, go to www.malcs.org; early registration by June 15, 2012.

Lorna Dee's Intensive Yoga/Poetry/Spirituality Workshop TODAY in San Jose! Come on down! As the Spirit Moves You

Come to my intensive yoga/poetry/Spirituality wkshp TODAY, 1-4, 510 S. First in SJ. Bring $25, 15-20 copies of a poem to wkshp, writing materials for poems & notes, comfortable clothing to sit, recline or stretch. Uh, & tip$$ for the poet as this is an unpaid gig & a benefit for scholarships from the Art of Living Fellowship's City Leadership Corps. This is a rare opportunity for me to discuss Spirit, Spirituality, language, breath & the conditions & experience of faith as it relates to poetry unfolding in the world and the art of living. I'm looking forward to it. (This is a non-denominational, non-religious, all-levels, all-ages, bilingual poetry workshop.) Just come with an open mind and heart and be prepared to write! You don't even have to move... as the Spirit moves you.
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Lorna Dee Cervantes Writing Workshop

Scholarship Fundraiser for Art of Living: City Leadership Corps
Type:
Education - Workshop
Date:
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Time:
1:00pm - 4:00pm
Location:
San Jose, CA
Street:
510 S. First St.
City/Town:
San Jose, CA
View Map
Description

LORNA DEE CERVANTES will be teaching a one-day writing workshop for ALL backgrounds and skill levels on Saturday, February 20th at MACLA in downtown San José. The workshop, from 1 - 4 p.m., costs $25.

The fundraiser is for the Art of Living's City Leadership Corps Fellowship.

DO NOT MISS this rare opportunity! PLEASE COME THROUGH!

EVEN IF you are not going to take the workshop, come by and leave a donation or buy some YUMMY home baked goods : )

Contact: Melissa Lozano
Art of Living's City Leadership Corps Fellow
Mills College
mlozano@mills.edu

Contact: Adriana Garcia
MAIZ Movimiento de Acción, Inspirando Servicio
maiz_mex@hotmail.com


Lorna Dee Cervantes is an award-winning Chicana-Native American poet who is considered one of the major Chicana poets of the past 40 years. She was born in 1954 in California and grew up in San Jose, speaking English exclusively. This was strictly enforced by her parents, who allowed only English to be spoken at home by her and her brother. This was to avoid the racism and genocide that was occurring in her community at that time. Lorna is a dynamic poet who draws tremendous power from her struggles in the literary and political trenches. She has received two National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellowships, a prestigious Lila Wallace Readers Digest Fellowship, and two Pushcart Prizes.
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Contact me at me dot COMmercial suffix at LornaDeeCervantes if you'd like to host your own poetry workshops in your own space. HAVE POEMS. WILL TRAVEL. I'm especially interested in DC & NY venues beginning to mid-March. $25 per person minimum depending upon travel expenses: make it a fundraiser or house party. Contact me about readings, presentations, workshops at your university, college or other venue. (I'm beginning to give up on colleges, etc., as they don't pay for months, especially in CA, but hey, I'm a yogi, I'm flexible.) I'll be posting my travel & readings schedule soon. Poetry On!

Intensive Poetry Workshops With Lorna Dee Cervantes This Weekend and Next - July 21, 22, 28, 29

[SCROLL DOWN FOR RECENT POSTS]

Today's workshop, Saturday, July 28th, starts at 12 noon and runs until 6 pm with lunch.
Sunday's workshop will begin at 11 am and run until 5 pm with lunch.
Please email me and confirm attendancve and to get address and phone number. Poetry On!
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Join me, Lorna Dee Cervantes, at my place in Berkeley this weekend and next for a day-long intensive poetry workshop July 21, 22, 28, 29. This workshop is designed to be open to all levels, from no experience to very experienced poets. Workshop begins at 10 am and runs until 4 pm with a vegetarian lunch and conversation served at 1 pm. [Saturday, July 28, workshop starts at 12 noon until 6 pm. Sunday, July 29, workshop starts at 11 am and runs until 5 pm.] Price reduced! $85 for two days, $50 for one. Sliding scale considered. Writers of all genres and persuasions are invited to attend as what we will cover may apply to all types of writing. Learn how to go from no poems to a full-length manuscript in one day. Bilingual (Spanish) writers welcome. Email me with a sample of your writing if you have it at PoetDee at mac dot com for address, phone number and directions. Discounts for advance payment: check, cash, paypal or my Amazon pay system account at the bottom of the blog page. So far, I have some great Chicana/Latina poets interested in attending, but this workshop is open to all. Please bring copies of one poem for workshopping with the group along with whatever we generate in class. Besides workshopping we may even find time to do a bit of works hopping.

I will also be available for private poetry manuscript consultation by phone or in person at $1 a page (for a limited time only). Send hardcopy of manuscript. I'm also available for editing or private consultation of fiction or literary nonfiction manuscripts - rate negotiable.

Not in Berkeley? Southwest and Frontier are offering some great rates on flights to Oakland. Me? I take the train.

Here's more about the workshops, a mini mini version of my grad and undergrad workshops at CU Boulder:

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There are about as many ways to write a poem as there are people on the planet. In poetry, as in love, there are no absolutes, and that's the only absolute. So, how does one make sense of the plethora? How, when faced with the whole enchilada, does one go about the process? For poetry is a process, above all else. As Coleridge once wrote, "Poetry is the pleasurable activity of the journey itself."

In this workshop we will map out the journey by dividing the poetic universe (multiverse) into four distinct phases of the creative/critical process: GENERATION, SELECTION, Re-VISION, and CRITICAL EVALUATION - much the way we splay out the patterns on a globe into east, south, west and north in order to get anywhere. No individual phase is more important than another and each has its own distinct character and unique phenomena. We will participate in exercises designed to match each phase of the process - rather than focus undue or premature attention upon poetry as product. We will discuss and consider many roads leading us there, to the finished poem ("finished" in the orgasmic sense rather than as executioner or, worse, as taxidermist.) We should, by the end of the day, come away with at least 5 new poems and a sense of our own patterns and patterning (for better or worse) and a new toolbox of techniques and methods, a new confidence and playfulness, a new sense of our own strengths and weaknesses as writers, and maybe even become acquainted with our own inner critic as well as become accustomed to the sound of our voice as well as our own individual "Voice" as a poet. We'll also cover the nuts and bolts of what I like to cal Po'Biz: How to prepare and edit a manuscript for submission. How to find publishers. How to maintain the inspiration (breath) for sustaining a work or book over time. How to perform our work in "Real Time". How and when to detach ourselves from our work and voice. How to criticize another poet's work. How to discover and foster a community of writers. Maybe even how to start and develop our own publishing resources and performance venues.

Each workshop will be unique to its participants and so may be repeated more than once. (Kind of like love-making.) This workshop respects all and expects such from participants. Expect diversity. Expect to learn how to pleasure yourself - so to speak.

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UPDATE: Depending upon participants, the workshops on July 28 and July 29th may be postponed to accomodate attendance at the SF Poetry Festival. Also, participants will be invited to attend the La Bomba Reading Benefit for La Galeria de la Raza in San Francisco on Saturday night, July 21.
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UPDATE: Menu for this weekend's workshops:

Guacamole & Blue corn chips

sweet corn, tomatillo, lime "dip" with sliced jicama "chips"

Lorna Dee's "Medicine" Soup: minced spinach, asparagus, broccoli, leek, onion, tempeh in No-Chicken broth

Cabbage, Carrot & Corn slaw w/cilantro & orange dressing

Creamy red potato salad w/ fresh dill

Edamane raviolli w/ shitake mushroom sauce

Layered Spanish "Tortilla" with green beans, tomatoes, red potatoes and Swiss cheese sauce

Whole wheat & multigrain garlic bread

(possible deserts)

Lorna Dee's "Hobo" Apple Blueberry Pie

Red Plum & blueberry Ice Cream cake
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(I'm hoping people will start coming for the food)