The Sundress Academy for the Arts hosts the Sundress Workshop Series, a series of generative writing 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. These monthly workshops are free to attend.
Workshops
The Poetry of First Date Impressions
September 13, 2023, 6:00-7:30PM EST
http://tiny.utk.edu/sundress
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “The Poetry of First Date Impressions,” a workshop led by Maya Williams on September 13, 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).
First impressions are fun to observe for their embodiment of awkwardness, the effect of imagery of first sights, and the setting of location that could either help or hurt a first meeting. This can especially be true in first date impressions whether you have experienced them, know you’re about to experience them, or heard of a person’s Bumble/Tinder/Hinge related befuddlement. This goes for romantic and platonic dates. Maya Williams will be using poems from their second collection Refused a Second Date, Khadijah Queen’s I’m So Fine, and Chen Chen’s Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency to encourage participants to write and discuss the poetic devices of displaying first date impressions.
While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Maya Williams via Venmo @MayaWilliams16, PayPal through mayawilliams16@gmail.com, or CashApp at $williamsmay13.
Maya Williams (ey/they/she) is a religious Black multiracial nonbinary suicide survivor who is currently the seventh poet laureate of Portland, Maine. Eir debut collection Judas & Suicide is available now via Game Over Books. Maya was one of three artists of color selected to represent Maine in The Kennedy Center’s Arts Across America series in 2020. Maya was also selected as one of The Advocate’s Champions of Pride in 2022. You can follow more of their work at mayawilliamspoet.com.
This workshop is brought to you in part by a grant provided by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry. Find out about the important work that they do here.
Writing the Grotesque: A Generative Poetry Event
October 11, 2023, 6:00-7:30PM EST
http://tiny.utk.edu/sundress
Sundress Academy for the Arts is honored to present, “Writing the Grotesque: A Generative Poetry Event,”’ a workshop led by Hannah V. Warren on October 11, 2023, from 6:00-7:30pm. This workshop will take place over Zoom. Participants can access the workshop at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (case-sensitive password: safta).
This generative writing event and short included lecture aim to encourage writers to explore the joys of incorporating traditionally displeasing aesthetics into their poetry. How can we beautify the non-beautiful? When should we let it remain hideous? Famously, aesthetician Wolfgang Kayser defines the grotesque as the “monstrous fusion of human and nonhuman elements.” With poets such as M. NourbeSe Philip, Danielle Pafunda, Selah Saterstrom, and Frank Stanford as models, this workshop offers composing methods to poets who seek to develop their use of bodily imagery.
Rather than viewing poetry as a genre with one lineage, participants will consider a variety of grotesque, abject, and sublime texts—including monster theory, art-horror, and fairy tales—as tools in poetry-writing. We’ll determine how a body can find power and reclamation in grotesquery. Participants will leave with written drafts and an expanded knowledge about what it means to embody and embrace the grotesque.
Hannah V. Warren is the author of Slaughterhouse for Old Wives Tales (Sundress Publications, 2023) and two chapbooks. Her works appear in Gulf Coast, Passages North, Crazyhorse, THRUSH, and Fairy Tale Review, among others. Currently a PhD candidate at the University of Georgia and a Fulbright scholar, Hannah’s writing and research interests center monstrous aesthetics, post/apocalypse literature, and representations of alterity.
While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to the workshop leader, Hannah V. Warren—Venmo: @hannahvwarren; PayPal: hannahvwarren@gmail.com.
This workshop is brought to you in part by a grant provided by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry. Find out about the important work they do, here.
Writing About Our Relationships to the Places We Inhabit
November 8, 2023, 6:00-7:30PM EST
http://tiny.utk.edu/sundress
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Writing About Our Relationships to the Places We Inhabit,” a workshop led by Shlagha Borah on November 8th, 2023, from 6:00-7:30 PM. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: safta).
In this workshop, participants will read and write about our relationships with the spaces they exist in. They will examine how places shape individuals, especially when they perpetuate violence or oppression in some way. Participants will look into our domestic, public and ecological surroundings to reimagine their environments beyond pastoral poetics. They will then question/explore the idea of “home,” situating themselves in their geographical histories and exploring how it informs the way they view the world. Which place are we running away from? Where do we run towards? The workshop will look at poems by Tarfia Faizullah, Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Tishani Doshi.
While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Shlagha Borah via Venmo @shlaghab.
Shlagha Borah (she/her) is a queer, multi-genre writer from Assam, India. Her work appears/is forthcoming in Salamander, Nashville Review, Identity Theory, Longleaf Review, Variant Literature, South Dakota Review, Passengers Journal, Rogue Agent, Hunger Journal, and elsewhere. She is pursuing an MFA in Poetry at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and is an Associate Poetry Editor at Grist. She has received support for her work from Brooklyn Poets and Sundress Academy for the Arts. She is the co-founder of Pink Freud, a student-led collective working towards making mental health accessible in India.
This workshop is brought to you in part by a grant provided by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry. Find out about the important work they do here.
A(n) (Un)holy Alliance: Braiding the Sacred and the Profane
December 13, 2023, 6:00-7:30PM EST
http://tiny.utk.edu/sundress
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “A(n) (Un)holy Alliance: Braiding the Sacred and the Profane,” a workshop led by Donna Vorreyer on December 13th, 2023, from 6:00-7:30 PM. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: safta).
The word profane refers to the secular world, the parts of a life that are not directly related to spiritual or religious practice. However you may define the spiritual in your own life, what might happen in our writing if we blend the sacred and the profane to make a liminal world where these two things coexist?
Looking at poems by Kaveh Akbar, Danez Smith, Li Young Lee, Katie Manning and others, we will discuss how writers use sensory image, ritual description, prayer structure, giving of thanks, reframing traditional stories, and borrowing language to braid their memory or experience of the divine into the everyday. After a discussion of model poems, we will complete a generative exercise that will lead to communal, quiet writing time to consider these things in a new draft. Time for questions and to share work will be provided.
While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Donna Vorreyer via PayPal through paypal.me/vorreyerpoet.
Donna Vorreyer is the author of To Everything There Is (2020), Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (2016) and A House of Many Windows (2013), all from Sundress Publications. She lives in the Chicago suburbs where she hosts the monthly online reading series A Hundred Pitchers of Honey.
This workshop is brought to you in part by a grant provided by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry. Find out about the important work they do here.