Freed by the Arbitrary: The Paradox of Literary Form with James Cushing
An intensive one day online poetry workshop with James Cushing.
This workshop begins with the notion that poetic form embodies a powerfully creative paradox that blends freedom with constraint—that, if a poet freely chooses to work within a form, the demands of that form can goad the poet’s imagination into territories the poet would never have found otherwise. The process of creation thereby involves the poet’s discovery of what had been waiting for articulation all along. You might say that the form may contain a secret—what the poet keeps hidden from consciousness—and that in this workshop, we’re trying to uncover that secret. We’ll work with a couple of forms that I’ve found enormously fecund, the PANTOUM and the SESTINA; we’ll read a couple of contemporary examples to see how they work, then enter these forms, both collectively and individually.
*One scholarship will be awarded to a QTPOC/BIPOC L.A.-residing individual who would like to join but does not have the means to do so. Please email us if interested at info@beyondbaroque.org
A Zoom link will be provided to all registered participants 24 hours before and on the day of the workshop.
About the Facilitator:
JAMES CUSHING is a poet who holds a doctorate in English from UC Irvine. He has been writing, publishing, and trying to teach poetry for fifty years. Associated with Beyond Baroque since the late 1970s, Cushing hosted a live poetry radio program on KPFK-FM which gave early exposure to Dennis Cooper, David Trinidad, Amy Gerstler, Wanda Coleman, Leland Hickman, and many others. From 1989-2020, he taught literature and creative writing at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and served as the community’s Poet Laureate for 2008 – 2010. Cushing’s poems have appeared in many journals, and as a co-founder of Cahuenga Press (with Harry Northup, Holly Prado, Phoebe MacAdams, and Cecilia Woloch), he has authored six collections: You and the Night and the Music (1991), The Length of an Afternoon (1999), Undercurrent Blues (2004), Pinocchio’s Revolution (2010), The Magicians’ Union (2016), and Solace(2018). His daughter is the New York-based poet Iris Cushing. Visit his website: www.jamescushingpoetry.com.
An intensive one day online poetry workshop with James Cushing.
This workshop begins with the notion that poetic form embodies a powerfully creative paradox that blends freedom with constraint—that, if a poet freely chooses to work within a form, the demands of that form can goad the poet’s imagination into territories the poet would never have found otherwise. The process of creation thereby involves the poet’s discovery of what had been waiting for articulation all along. You might say that the form may contain a secret—what the poet keeps hidden from consciousness—and that in this workshop, we’re trying to uncover that secret. We’ll work with a couple of forms that I’ve found enormously fecund, the PANTOUM and the SESTINA; we’ll read a couple of contemporary examples to see how they work, then enter these forms, both collectively and individually.
*One scholarship will be awarded to a QTPOC/BIPOC L.A.-residing individual who would like to join but does not have the means to do so. Please email us if interested at info@beyondbaroque.org
A Zoom link will be provided to all registered participants 24 hours before and on the day of the workshop.
About the Facilitator:
JAMES CUSHING is a poet who holds a doctorate in English from UC Irvine. He has been writing, publishing, and trying to teach poetry for fifty years. Associated with Beyond Baroque since the late 1970s, Cushing hosted a live poetry radio program on KPFK-FM which gave early exposure to Dennis Cooper, David Trinidad, Amy Gerstler, Wanda Coleman, Leland Hickman, and many others. From 1989-2020, he taught literature and creative writing at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and served as the community’s Poet Laureate for 2008 – 2010. Cushing’s poems have appeared in many journals, and as a co-founder of Cahuenga Press (with Harry Northup, Holly Prado, Phoebe MacAdams, and Cecilia Woloch), he has authored six collections: You and the Night and the Music (1991), The Length of an Afternoon (1999), Undercurrent Blues (2004), Pinocchio’s Revolution (2010), The Magicians’ Union (2016), and Solace(2018). His daughter is the New York-based poet Iris Cushing. Visit his website: www.jamescushingpoetry.com.