Cost: donate what you can afford.

Workshop Description: Compelled by the connection between the subconscious and the poem draft? Looking to tap into image and dream as a means of generating new material? Curious by what a past self might reveal to the present you if given the space? Join us for a generative workshop where we will cultivate an environment for the subconscious to reveal unanticipated avenues of verse composition. After reading a brief selection of poems by contemporary LGBTQ+ poets who subvert our ideas of what a poem can be or do, we will explore our own practice. Through guided meditation and free writing, as well as a few unexpected prompts, we will write, contemplate, and share.

***Please be sure that you are in a comfortable environment with minimal distraction. As we will rely on the analog for this workshop, a notebook and pen will be necessary.

***This workshop is a co-production of Reading Queer and the Wild & Precious Life Series. All workshops are designed as safe creative spaces for the LGBTQ writers and allies. We welcome all writers at all levels from around the world.

About Julie E. Bloemeke: Bloemeke’s first full-length collection of poetry, Slide to Unlock, debuted with Sibling Rivalry Press in March 2020. Chosen by Stephen Dunn as finalist for the 2016 May Swenson Poetry Award through University Press of Colorado and Utah State University Press, Slide to Unlock has also been a semifinalist in numerous book prizes including the Crab Orchard Review First Book Award and the Crab Orchard Review Poetry Open Competition with Southern Illinois University Press; the Washington Prize through Word Works; and the Hudson Prize through Black Lawrence Press. A fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Bloemeke earned her MA in American Literature from the University of South Carolina–where she was a Ramsaur Fellow–and her MFA in poetry from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary magazines including Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast, Cortland Review, Pine Hills Review, Crab Orchard Review, Muse/A Journal, Chautauqua Literary Journal, Poet Lore, and others. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in a number of anthologies including: Mother Mary Comes to Me, A Constellation of Kisses, Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse, The Great Gatsby Anthology, The Sense of the Midlands, The Nancy Drew Anthology, The Southern Poetry Anthology Volume V: Georgia and the My Cruel Invention Anthology, among others.

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She was the first place prize recipient in poetry competitions for both the Atlanta Writer’s Club and the Emory Poetry Council at Emory University and has been a finalist for the Arts & Letters Poetry Prize. She was also a finalist for the Saluda River Poetry Prize for the State of South Carolina. Her poem, “Electric Mail” was a finalist in the William Faulkner Wisdom Competition; she was also a winner in the Artists Embassy International Dancing Poetry contest where she read her poem, “Pinned,” as part of the annual performance in San Francisco.

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Her ekphrastic work on Philip C. Curtis was selected for a limited edition chapbook anthology collaboration between the Phoenix Museum of Art and Four Chambers Press; she also won the 2015 ekphrastic poetry competition at the Toledo Museum of Art where her work was on view with the Claude Monet collection. Her poetry and photography series on abandoned buildings in the Atlanta suburbs was featured in Deep South Magazine.

In addition to serving as a literary docent with the Toledo Museum of Art, she was the inaugural Poetry Director for the Milton Literary Festival in Georgia in 2016. She was also the 2020 judge for the Robert V. Morea III Poetry Prize through Georgia State University and will serve as the 2021 judge for the Bryon Herbert Reece International Poetry Award.

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A freelance writer, editor, and guest lecturer, her interviews have recently appeared in The AWP Writer’s Chronicle and Poetry International. She has also been a guest blogger at Best American Poetry where she wrote about technology poetry and her studies with James Dickey.

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She is a proud native of Toledo, Ohio.