POETRY READING 2NITE THURSDAY, APRIL, 28th

Please join us 4/28 in celebrating National Poetry Month and the closing event for Salem State’s Writers’ Series with poets:

LISA OLSTEIN & DAVID DANIEL
WHEN: THURSDAY, APRIL 28th , 7:30 PM
WHERE: MLK ROOM, ELLISON CAMPUS CENTER

Lisa Olstein is the author of Radio Crackling, Radio Gone (Copper Canyon Press, 2006), winner of the Hayden Carruth Award, and Lost Alphabet, named one of the nine best poetry books of 2009 by Library Journal (Copper Canyon Press, 2009). Cold Satellite, an album of songs based on her writing, was released by singer-songwriter Jeffrey Foucault in fall 2010. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and Centrum. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals including The Iowa Review, American Letters & Commentary, Denver Quarterly, Fairy Tale Review, Indiana Review, notnostrums, and Glitterpony. She is a contributing editor of jubilat. With Dara Wier and Noy Holland she co-founded the Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts & Action at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she is Associate Director of MFA Program for Poets and Writers.

David Daniel was raised in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He has been poetry editor of the literary journal Ploughshares and has taught literature and poetry writing at Emerson College in Boston. His first full-length collection, Seven-Star Bird (Graywolf, 2003) was the winner of the Levis Reading Prize. He is also the author of a chapbook, The Quick and the Dead (Haw River, 1992). His poems have appeared in such journals as AGNI, Witness, The Literary Review, LILT, Poetry East, the Antioch Review, and Post Road. His essays and reviews have been published in various venues, including The Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Boston Review, The Writer’s Chronicle, and The Journal of Country Music.

I hope you are able to attend!

Writing Prompt #14

Pick an incident or event that you’ve tried to write about or that you’ve hesitated to write about because it is so personal or difficult. First write it in the first person point of view. When you are done, write it in the third person omniscient, meaning that there is a narrator who knows all and sees all and who is commenting on what is happening according to the “truth” of the incident.

Writing Prompt #11

Choose an individual who has been enormously influential in your life.
Create  list of ten things that person has taught you.
Create a list of ten things that person did not teach you.
Create a list of ten items that fit into the category of things not known.
Call this list: "I Want to Know Why"
Take one item from this list and write a page of prose about it.

Writing Prompt #12

Take one of the following ideas and begin a short story filled with all five senses:
1. A young girl and her mother walk to the edge of a field, kneel down in the grass and plant a tree.
2. A small team of graduate students are conducting research at sea when they are overtaken by a wild storm.
3. A middle-aged man wakes up in a seemingly endless field of wildflowers in full bloom.
4. A family of five from a large, urban city decides to spend their one-week vacation camping.
5. An elderly couple traveling through the desert spend an evening stargazing.
6. A woman is working in her garden.
7. Some people are hiking in the woods when they are suddenly surrounded by hundreds of butterflies.
8. A person who lives in a metropolitan apartment connects with nature through the birds that come to the window.
9. A group of college students launch a project to grow their own food so they can eat healthier and be closer to nature.
10. A rural family moves to a big city or
11. A city family moves to the country
12. Two adolescents, a sister and brother, are visiting their relatives' farm and witness a sow giving birth.

Writing Prompt #13

1.     Begin with oral storytelling about something that happened to you in the past week or month

2.     Take 10 minutes to write a pure narration (telling) version of the recent event

3.     Next do a pure scene version

4.     Finally, write a version that is a combination of both scene and narration.

5.     Read each version aloud to your group and listen to feedback from your peers.

MANDATORY ATTENDANCE @ MEMOIR READING TONIGHT!! 3/30 WED.

Judith Nies will read tonight in the MLK room in Ellison at 7:30. Anyone who wants to meet the author and have dinner with her, come to Panera Bread in Vinnin Square at 6 p.m. There will be no class tomorrow. Conferences available all day in Meier Hall room 104 (Prof. Mulman's office).

Creative Writing Prompt #7

Write an poem that uses metaphor or extended metaphor to describe the act of writing.

Creative Writing Prompt #10

Read the poems listed under Tues. 3/8 on the syllabus. "Waiting for the Barbarians" is on this blog (scroll down, on left), Merwin's is about war and the extinction of animal species. Try to focus on one thing that enrages you which is happening in the world today and write a political poem.

Creative Writing Prompt #9

Write a poem about a place

My Dear Slacker Students

I am so excited to see Denielle's, Nicole's,Liz's and Jill's blogs!! Please connect with all of us and create one. Bring your URLS to class so that we can all follow each others progress and support each other! Put your new poems, thoughts and whatever on them.

Poetry Slam Thursday March 10th

Instead of meeting in our classroom on this date we will meet on the mezzanine level of Central Campus, just outside the library near the elevator to read and listen to our poems and have some coffee and breakfast together. Invite anyone you'd like.

Creative Writing Prompt #8

Write an Elegy. Think of how a traditional elegy mirror the three stages of  loss: first, there is a lament, where the speaker expresses grief and sorrow (2) then, there is praise and admiration of the idealized dead and (3) finally, there is consolation and solace.

REQUIREMENT: 7:30, Thursday night in MLK room in Ellison

Matt Bell (http://www.mdbell.com), Steve Himmer (http://www.stevehimmer.com) and Robert Kloss (http://rkbirdsofprey.bogspot.com) will read.


All Thursday conferences will meet in Meier Hall room 104 (Professor  Mulman's office)

Writing Prompt #6 Write a Persona Poem

Look at what's posted on WebCT and check our anthology for inspiration. Who would you want to pretend to be?

Those of you who are very interested in fiction

might want to read Alice LaPlante's Method and Madness: The Making of a Story and John Gardner's The Art of Fiction or On Becoming a Novelist. As with all writing, if you find something you love, take it apart, study its structure, see what makes it tick, imitate it.

Writing Prompt #5

Take a common object and study it, writing down everything that you notice, then connect the object to a memory, an association, an idea. Make that object vivid and present for the reader.

Now, let’s get wacky!

List ordinary objects around you. You can do this anywhere.

Next choose two of these objects.

The first object is in love with the second object. Maybe the shirt is longing to be reunited with the dresser. Or the tv is flipping wildly for the entertainment of flowers in a vase.

Let your imagination create their world.

Reading Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer this weekend

and I highly recommend it for those of you who are serious writers. She maintains that you must be a close reader and turn passages inside out in order to understand how they are composed (she likens it to a mechanic fixing an engine!). There are some exquisite prose examples in the third chapter (Sentences). A good writer is a good reader!

Be sure to set up your blog at blogspot.com

All you need is a Google account. Type in the latest piece of writing that you would like to share. Any random, inspired  thoughts would be welcomed too.  A few of you are insomniacs. Maybe you could meet here in the middle of the night!

Unit One Reminder

Our last day of Unit One, On Creativity will be over Thursday, Feb. 10th with the group presentation of your Twyla Tharp main idea. Your Unit One portfolio (4 prompts and your creative autobiography) is due Tuesday, Feb. 15th.

Writing Prompt #4

What do you do everyday-or on a regular basis? Write a poem/story/creative non fiction about showering or jogging or cooking and so on. Try in the poem (or whatever) to get at the way you perform this particular activity that might be different from someone else.

Writing Prompt #3

Take an old family photograph (with you in it) and study it. What do you see in it that is similar to your life today, to the persona you've become? What is vaguely similar? What bears no resemblance or suggests nothing memorable? What ended up as opposite of what you see? Explain this to yourself. What faces - teachers, relatives, friends, neighbors, nemeses, strangers, pets - appear unbidden? Connect with something old so that it becomes new. Look and imagine.

Writing Prompt #2- First Line Auction

Write a line of poetry or prose that seems to be a strong opening line. Be prepared to discuss why your line is a first line rather than a line that might function equally well in a different content, and to describe the poem or story you envision following your line in terms of ideas and form.

 After we discuss your line, students will "bid." You must agree to give your line to the student whose suggestion, enthusiasm, or oddball approach most pleases you.

Next class , bring in a poem or a story draft beginning with your "purchased line."

Writing Prompt #1

Make a list of some of the most memorable events in your life. Some of them will be large - a death, a break up, some goal you finally accomplished. But list the small things too - things you always remembered as special and important in some way. When you're finished you should have a list of subjects for poems which could take you years to write. For now, start a poem about one of the events you've listed; every so often, you can go back to the list and pick another one.

First Class 2/18

Welcome to Creative Writing! Today we will review texts, complete first day forms, do a writing prompt and read Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz". Be sure to bring your laptops for Thursday to begin your own blog!