| | |  Travel Writers' Resources 
U.S. Poets in Mexico 2011 in Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico
 Sheila Lanham - USPiM
May 26, 2010
| | Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico | |
UPDATE 06/02/10: Rae Armantrout had to cancel due to a conflict with her first semester teaching schedule at UCSD. Terribly disappointing, because we love Rae!
Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico - With a talented community of poets from the U.S. and Mexico, 80-degree days and stunning beaches with a clear, turquoise surf - the January 2011 workshops will be one of our most thought provoking AND relaxing events to date!
| U.S. Poets in Mexico January 2-9, 2011
Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico
Application & Contest Deadline must be received by: October 15, 2010
Be sure to enter our Second Annual Merida Fellowship Award Competition
Judge: Maureen Owen
Includes tuition fees, lodging and 2 excursions
$25 Entry Fee
All workshop applicants are automatically entered.
Reading/Entry Fee: $25 Registration Fee: $200 Tuition: $500
Apply - www.uspoetsinmexico.org | |
NEWS: Our January 2-9, 2011 program will be held in Tulum instead of Playa del Carmen. Carolyn Forche will not be joining us in January, but sometime in the future. Upcoming January faculty member, Rae Armantrout, won both the National Book Critic's Circle Award for Poetry and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her book, Versed (Wesleyan, 2009). For two weeks, June 28-July 12, Forrest Gander and Alfonso D'Aquino will participate in our first Translation Residency series Two Voices and One Vision (dos voces y una visión). USPiM will produce a 20-minute film documenting their residency and the process of translation. Alfonso and Forrest will give a free public reading on Saturday, July 3rd in the auditorium of the Galería de Arte Contemporáneo de Xalapa, Avenida Xalapeños Ilustres No. 135, Xalapa at 18:00 hrs. News updates can be found here.
Workshop Descriptions are listed below.
Tulum
Tulum is paradise found, with its combination of pristine beaches, a stunning archeological zone and a thriving small pueblo. Tulum beach is laid back and bohemian with its rustic beachfront cabanas and small boutique hotels, many of which are "green" (little or no electricity). All beaches in Mexico are "public" and while there are no "private" beaches-access to the Tulum beaches, in most cases, can only be achieved through private land, hotels or beach clubs. This is why more than one yoga retreat exists along this stretch of unparalleled beaches - they offer privacy, peace and quiet - also a perfect environment for contemplation and writing. During the High Season, beach cabanas cost $45/per night and up. Contact us for lodging options.
Optional Excursions: One day at the Tulum and Coba archaeological sites, and a boat trip through Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Consisting of 1.6 million acres of lowland forest, flooded savannas, mangroves, and a portion of the world's second largest coastal barrier reef-- the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef--the Reserve provides habitat for 350 species of birds, as well as jaguar, puma, ocelot, spider and howler monkeys, crocodiles, and many types of turtles. Additionally, the Reserve is home to 23 different archaeological sites of pre-Columbian culture. All USPiM Excursions are "at cost" and not for profit, since we strive to further literary, cultural and ecological awareness in Mexico. Our Sian Ka'an tour operators are trained naturalists and part of a Maya non-profit cooperative. Aside from the Reserve organization, they are the only tour guides allowed in the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve. Only 24 visitors are permitted on any given day. Reserve early.
Our Second Annual Mérida Fellowship Award will be judged by Maureen Owen (more about Maureen below). The Fellowship will be awarded to one American poet (over the age of 18) and includes workshop fees, two excursions and lodging for the week! Deadline October 15 , 2010. The winner will be notified by email and announced on our website. $25 entry fee. All U.S. citizen workshop applicants will automatically be entered in the competition.
Every year we also award five full tuition awards to local writers and poets in the state within Mexico where our workshops are held. In January 2011, those writers will be selected in the state of Quintana Roo by members of the local academic community. These awards integrate our program with local literary communities throughout Mexico.
Returning participants: receive a 10% discount on fees (an automatic savings of $70). New participants: take advantage of the $25 discount coupon below.
USPiM is under the fiscal sponsorship of The Solo Foundation. The Solo Foundation is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit since 1981, that utilizes the visual and performance arts as a medium to raise public awareness about pertinent social issues. All contributions to USPiM through The Solo Foundation, are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law. In 2010 we will apply for our own non-profit status. *Donations are always welcome - we struggle to provide events that further literary and cultural awareness between the U.S. and Mexico.
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Workshop Descriptions
RAE ARMANTROUT: Variation and Re-Vision
Four 3-hour workshops
In this workshop we will take another look at the revision process, seeing it not as correction but as creative variation. As jazz musicians improvise on standard tunes to explore new musical possibilities, participants will generate a set of related poems from the material produced by one writing exercise. We will begin (in the spirit of William Carlos Williams' famous poem about the red wheelbarrow) by writing poems in response to a common object. I will bring in a collection of interesting things to get us started.
Participants will respond to one another's first poems, not with formal critique, but simply by identifying what interested and excited (or troubled) them most in each piece. Based on what he/she hears, each author will produce variations on his/her original poem. You may do a minimalist version, stripping your original down to its core. Then you may do an extravagant, Baroque version, elaborating on one of the elements your fellow participants found most exciting. You may break your original piece into a group of separate but related sections to form a "serial poem." Etc. By the workshop's end, you will have not so much revised a poem as produced a suite of variations on a theme. Please bring a pen, paper, and a willingness to experiment with you to this workshop.
• • •
DIANE WAKOSKI:
Four 3-hour workshops
During the four scheduled workshop sessions, each participant's work will be read and critiqued in the context of Creating A Personal Mythology. For further reference to this subject, you may consult in advance of the workshop with my various writings on the subject and, specifically, read the introduction to my new collection of poems, The Diamond Dog (Anhinga Press, 2010).
In each workshop session at least one poem by each participant will be discussed, focusing on use of trope and figurative language in shaping the poem, as well as the underlying myths and archetypes that the poem invokes or uses.
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JEROME ROTHENBERG
Three 1 1/2-hour Discussions
1. Translation as Composition & Other Forms of Otherin
A discussion of various procedures for bringing a range of other voices into the work of the poet as individual author.
2. Ethnopoetics at the Millennium
A review of ethnopoetics four decades after its introduction into poetic theory and practice.
3. The Anthology as Collage & Manifesto
A personal account of how the anthology can serve as an epic form of composition and as a means of transforming our ideas of poetry as such.
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ALBERTO BLANCO
Two 2-hour workshops (one in English, one in Spanish)
Taller en españo
Dedicaremos la sesión no a leer y analizar poemas ya escritos ni a juzgar el trabajo que los participantes hayan hecho antes, sino a realizar nuevos ejercicios de escritura a partir de un par de hipótesis de trabajo:
1. La poesía es LA OTRA FORMA de usar el lenguaje. Lo cual quiere decir, por principio de cuentas, que todos los demás géneros literarios trabajan casi siempre con una misma forma de usar el lenguaje, y que la poesía lo hace de otra manera. Casi podríamos decir que AL REVÉS.
2. La poesía es mitad imagen, mitad música y mitad poesía.
En el taller nos interesa abrir nuevas posibilidades de escritura creativa, poniendo el énfasis en el proceso más que en los resultados. Sé bien que, de cualquier forma, los resultados serán sorpendente.
Workshop in English
We will dedicate the workshop session not to read or analyze poems already written by the participants, but to new writing exercises that will take into consideration two basic axioms:
1. Poetry is THE OTHER FORM of using language. Which means that, to begin with, prose, short stories, narratives, novels, essays, chronicles, articles, etc., almost always share a same way of using language, and that poetry uses language in a completely different way. UPSIDE DOWN.
2. Poetry is half image, half music and half poetry.
So, in this workshop, we are interested in opening new venues for creative writing, underlining the process much more than the results. In any case, I know that the results will be quite amazing.
• • •
MARK WEISS
Four 3-hour workshops
In this workshop we will take advantage of separation from our usual cultural and linguistic worlds to focus on poetry as a way to explore, a process that may know its beginning but needs to discover its end, or a game that invents its rules in the act of playing. We'll be looking at and experimenting with risk-taking, the unfamiliar, the word that surprises, losing our balance and finding a new one, presuming nothing in advance. To that end we'll begin with some de-centering exercises and some issues of translation and difference and proceed to where the workshop takes us, mindful of music in all its forms and the literal world within and around us.
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JEN HOFER
Four 3-hour workshops
Stranger in a Strange Land: The Poetics and Processes of Translation
To translate is to work on the most local and the most global scale simultaneously. The tiniest punctuation mark, space on the page, turn of phrase must be attended to rigorously, lovingly. The larger ramifications in both directions (source language, target language; original writer, imagined audience) of the choices we make in language suggest far-reaching harmonics and reverberations in terms of the workings of power in language. Translation practice is a political act in literary terrain, and also provides a practical and philosophical model for how we-as writers, as artists-might approach difference with openness, curiosity, self-examination, willingness to listen.
This workshop is designed for writers who are engaged in translation projects and for writers who are interested in thinking about issues of translation as they relate to writing practices in English (i.e. non-translator writers).We will read both texts in translation and texts about translation. We will consider some of the questions that have provided the foundations for modern and contemporary theories of translation, including (but not limited to) questions of "americanization" vs. "foreignization," "faithfulness" vs. "betrayal," the effects of different translation choices on the target language, questions of audience and the reception of foreign texts, and the political ramifications of translation practice.We will also consider recent investigations into the poetics and politics of translation, among them: nomadic discourses and questions of "otherness," "untranslatable" texts, translation as activist literary practice, and writing as translation.This is a hands-on workshop: please come ready to write or translate or both.
• • •
SUSAN RICH
Four 3-hour workshops
Speaking Pictures: A Poetry Workshop
"Look at the subject, think about it before photographing, look until it becomes alive and looks back into you." -Edward Steichen
This will be a writing workshop focused on ekphrasis, poems written about visual art. Famous models of the form by such poets as Rilke, Robert Hayden, and Lisel Mueller will be examined as well as many contemporary examples. Participants will sharpen their powers of observation and try their hand at writing poems based on a vast array of visual pieces.
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FEATURED READINGS
Alberto Blanco, Luis Cortés Bargalló, Feliciano Sánchez Chan (Maya language!)
• • •
Judge for our 2011 Mérida Fellowship Award
MAUREEN OWEN
Maureen Owen is the author of ten poetry titles, most recently Erosion's Pull from Coffee House Press, a finalist for the Colorado Book Award and the Balcones Poetry Prize. Her title American Rush: Selected Poems was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize and her work AE (Amelia Earhart) was a recipient of the prestigious Before Columbus American Book Award. Other books include Imaginary Income, Zombie Notes, a brass choir approaches the burial ground, The No-Travels Journal, and Untapped Maps. She has work most recently published in YAWP magazine, Columbia Review, Hanging Loose, Poems from the Women's Movement, The library of America, ed. Honor Moore, and Visiting Wallace, Univ. of Iowa Press (eds. Dennis Barone and James Finnegan). Maureen is a recipient of an NEA Writing Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts grant and most recently a Fund for Poetry grant. She currently teaches at Naropa University both on campus and in the low-residency MFA Creative Writing Program and is editor-in-chief of Naropa's on-line zine, not enough night.
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We suggest lodging in beach cabanas. A thatched roof cabana, a bed, a table & two chairs, a hammock and the turquoise sea is what you can expect - along with a week of poetry, philosophy and camaraderie. If lizards and iguanas startle you, choose to stay in an economical hotel Tulum Pueblo, a 15 minute bike ride (or a $4 taxi ride) from the beach. Bike rentals are approx. $10/day.
uspoetsinmexico(at)verizon.net.
U.S. Poets in Mexico | P.O. Box 4150 | Grand Central Station | New York | NY | 10163 |
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