The Sundress Academy for the Arts hosts the Sundress Workshop Series, a series of creative arts workshops emphasizing composition, revision, and creative development. As part of Sundress Publications, the Sundress Workshop Series provide focused, personalized instruction to writers of all skill levels. Participants are treated to guidance from advanced instructors who help them to not only hone their craft but also find suitable venues for their work.
Workshops
Turn! Turn! Turn! Reimagining the Volta
March 15, 2023, 6:00-7:30PM EST
http://tiny.utk.edu/sundress
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Turn! Turn! Turn! Reimagining the Volta,” a workshop led by Alyse Bensel on March 15, 2023, from 6-7:30 PM. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: safta).
The volta is not just for sonnets. Rather, turns abound in all forms and genres, building tension, generating emotional shifts, and sparking energy. Drawing from formalist traditions, we’ll translate the conventions of received forms into free verse poetry and short prose forms such as micro memoir and flash fiction.
The workshop will begin with a brief overview of the volta’s origins, move into a discussion of contemporary writers such as Joan Naviyuk Kane, Sabrina Orah Mark, and Beth Ann Fennelly, and feature generative writing prompts with an emphasis on turns. There will be opportunities for sharing generated work with the workshop group.
While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Alyse Bensel via Venmo @AlyseBensel or PayPal @alysebensel.
Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks. Her work has appeared in AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, Southern Indiana Review, and West Branch. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree and teaches at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference.
This workshop is brought to you in part by a grant provided by the Tennessee Arts Commission. Find out about the important work they do here.
Cognitive Dissonance Unlocked: Persona Poems that Give More than Poetry
April 12, 2023, 6:00-7:30PM EST
http://tiny.utk.edu/sundress
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Cognitive Dissonance Unlocked: Persona Poems that Give More than Poetry,” a workshop led by Denise R. Ervin on April 12, 2023, from 6-7:30 PM. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: safta).
A common trend when reading poetry is to conflate the poet with the speaker. The easiest way to unlock the cognitive dissonance of hearing a voice that does not match the person it comes from is to view performances of persona poems from established artists who are masters at the task. Some of these literary greats include Airea Dee Matthews and Patricia Smith. In this 90-minute workshop, we will watch performances and discuss not only the feelings evoked by the poems but how the words and images presented conjure ideals for us that do not match the performer of the words.
Denise R. Ervin is a creative writer hewn from the streets, classrooms, and boardrooms of Detroit, all of which taught her to contribute to the narrative of those who live, love, and look like her. She has spent two decades as a teaching artist, performing poetry around the country, and leading workshops for the likes of Midnight & Indigo and Room Project. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in AADUNA, Harbinger Asylum, Third Wednesday Magazine, and others. Most recently, she was selected as a Writing Fellow by The Watering Hole and a semifinalist for America’s Next Great Author.
While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Denise Ervin via Paypal: denise.ervin@hotmail.com; Cash App $deniserervin.
This workshop is brought to you in part by a grant provided by the Tennessee Arts Commission. Find out about the important work they do here.
Summer Poetry Writing Retreat
June 2nd-4th, 2023
Firefly Farms, Knoxville, TN
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is thrilled to announce its Summer Poetry Writing Retreat, which runs from June 2nd through June 4th, 2023. The three-day, two-night camping retreat will be held at SAFTA’s own Firefly Farms in Knoxville, Tennessee. All SAFTA retreats focus on generative poetry writing, and this year’s poetry retreat will also include the following break-out sessions: “The Cascade and the Overflow: The Use and Uselessness of Punctuating Your Poetry” and “Singing the Body Electric: Writing our Embodied Experiences.”
A weekend pass includes one-on-one and group instruction, writing supplies, food, drinks, and all on-site amenities for $250. Tents, sleeping bags, and other camping equipment are available to rent for $25. Payment plans are available if you reserve by March 31, 2023.
The event will be open to writers of all backgrounds and provide an opportunity to work with many talented, published poets from around the country, including workshop leaders Hali Sofala-Jones and Darren C. Demaree.
Workshops
“Singing the Body Electric: Writing our Embodied Experiences”: What does it mean to “sing the body electric,” as Walt Whitman famously wrote? How do we use our embodied experiences, both the joyous and the traumatic, in our writing? In “Singing the Body Electric: Writing our Embodied Experiences”, we will consider our body alongside how and what we write, exploring how it can be a resource and guide for our poetry. Through discussion and guided prompts, we will practice confronting and celebrating writing from and for the body drawing inspiration from authors such as Audre Lorde, Lucille Clifton, Ocean Vuong, Natalie Diaz, Warsan Shire, and Ada Limón.
“The Cascade and the Overflow: The Use and Uselessness of Punctuating Your Poetry”: In this workshop, we will explore the strategy of punctuation in the poetic form, how it can be used, ignored, twisted and turned into what we need it to be or what we need to ignore to write the best possible poetry.
Workshop Leaders
Hali Sofala-Jones is a Samoan American writer and teacher originally from Eatonton, GA. She holds degrees from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her 2019 debut poetry collection, Afakasi | Half-Caste, was published by Sundress Publications and was heralded by the Chicago Review of Books as one of the “10 Great Poetry Collections You May Have Missed” in 2019. Her work has been published in The Missouri Review, Blue Mesa Review, CALYX, Fugue, and elsewhere. Her poem “Fractured” was featured in the Poem of the Day series by the Academic of American Poets. Sofala-Jones serves as faculty in the Department of English at Middle Georgia State University in Macon, GA. When not teaching or writing, she enjoys traveling and hanging out with family. Her guilty pleasures are popcorn and romance novels.
Darren C. Demaree is the author of eighteen poetry collections, most recently the luxury (Glass Lyre 2023). He is the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and the Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.
Scholarships
We have two full fellowships available–one for a writer of color and one general one–as well as limited 20% scholarships for those with financial need. To apply for a scholarship, send a packet of no more than (8) pages of poetry along with a brief statement on why you would like to attend this workshop to Erin Elizabeth Smith at erin@sundresspublications.com no later than March 24, 2023. Winners will be announced in early April.
All participants must be vaccinated and present a negative COVID test taken within 24 hours of attending the event.
Space at this workshop is limited to 14 writers, so reserve your place today!
Trans/Nonbinary Writing Retreat
June 9th-10th, 2023
Zoom
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is thrilled to announce its Trans/Nonbinary Retreat, which runs from Friday, June 9th through Saturday, June 10, 2023. This event will be entirely virtual held via Zoom. All SAFTA retreats focus on generative writing, and this year’s retreat will also include the following craft talk sessions: “Queering the Lens: Trans Ekphrastic” and “The Poetics of Addiction: Imagery, Symbolism, and Juxtaposition in Writing Alcoholism.”
The event will be open to trans and nonbinary writers of all backgrounds and experience levels and provide an opportunity to work with many talented authors and poets from around the country, including workshop leaders jason b. crawford and Remi Recchia and keynote speaker Ina Cariño.
Ina Cariño is a 2022 Whiting Award winner with an MFA in creative writing from North Carolina State University. Their poetry appears or is forthcoming in the American Poetry Review, the Margins, Guernica, Poetry Northwest, Poetry Magazine, the Paris Review Daily, Waxwing, New England Review, and elsewhere. She is a Kundiman fellow and is the winner of the 2021 Alice James Award for Feast, forthcoming from Alice James Books in March 2023. In 2021, Ina was selected as one of four winners of the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest.
jason b. crawford (they/them) was born in Washington DC and raised in Lansing, MI. They are the author of Year of the Unicorn Kidz and an MFA candidate in poetry at The New School (‘23).
Remi Recchia is a trans poet and essayist from Kalamazoo, Michigan. He is a PhD candidate in English-Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University. He currently serves as an associate editor for the Cimarron Review and Book Editor for Gasher Press. A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Remi’s work has appeared in World Literature Today, Best New Poets 2021, Columbia Online Journal, Harpur Palate, and Juked, among others. He holds an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University. Remi is the author of Quicksand / Stargazing (Cooper Dillon Books, 2021) and Sober (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2022) and the editor of Transmasculine Poetics:
Filling the Gap in Literature & the Silences Around Us (Sundress Publications 2024).
The total cost of attendance is $75. To apply for a fellowship, please send a packet of 5-12 pages of writing (poetry, fiction, or nonfiction) along with a brief statement on why you would like to attend this workshop to safta@sundresspublications.com no later than March 30, 2023. Winners will be contacted mid-April.
Space at this workshop may be limited, so please reserve your place today.