Regional Workshop | MN - Douglas Kearney
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Minneapolis - Pattern/Constraint/Sound: Poetic Form Laboratory
Instructor: Douglas Kearney
Applications Open: July 1 - August 18
Workshop Sessions: September - November, 6-9 PM
Workshop Location & Reading: Loft Literary Center
Cave Canem’s workshops are rare opportunities for poets of all experience levels to work with and learn directly from accomplished poets in Cave Canem’s network. Limited to small enrollment groups, these multiple-session workshops offer rigorous instruction, careful critique, and an introduction to the work of influential poets. Workshops are tuition-free and free to apply.
About Pattern/Constraint/Sound: Poetic Form Laboratory
Not just about writing sonnets, this workshop about forms offers writers the opportunity to more deeply engage questions of structure, sound, and innovation. Rigorous and playful, Pattern/Constraint/Sound helps writers take such questions up, exploring and then exploding forms inside and out. Poets will develop their prosodic chops, fortifying not only their writing but also their understanding of why we have certain habits, blocks, and technical mojos. Poets will try their hands at forms old and new from around the globe, develop their own new forms, and experiment with writing formats outside of poetry (including tables, questionnaires, prescriptions, and more!).
Eligibility
Any adult (18 or older) Black poet of any experience level who is a resident of the city or immediate surrounding area may apply to participate in the workshop. Cave Canem defines Black poets as any poet who identifies as a member of the African Diaspora.
Guidelines
- Applicants must submit five original poems and a short cover letter through the Submittable application.
- One application per poet will be accepted.
- Please note that all workshop participants are required to take a post-workshop survey after the conclusion of the program. Photos of participants may be taken throughout the workshops and reading.
About Douglas Kearney
Douglas Kearney (2000) has published nine books, ranging from poetry to essays to libretti. In 2023, Optic Subwoof, a collection of his Bagley Wright lectures, won the Poetry Foundation’s Pegasus Prize for Poetry Criticism and the CLMP Firecracker Award for Creative Nonfiction. His most recent poetry book, I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always, is a collection of visual poetry. His poetry collection, Sho (Wave Books, 2021), is a Griffin Poetry Prize and Minnesota Book Award winner, and a National Book Award, Pen America, Hurston/Wright, Kingsley Tufts, and Big Other Book Award finalist. He is the 2021 recipient of OPERA America’s Campbell Opera Librettist Prize, created and generously funded by librettist/lyricist Mark Campbell. Kearney is a 2022 McKnight Writing Fellow. A Whiting Writer’s and Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly awardee with residencies/fellowships from Cave Canem, The Rauschenberg Foundation, and others, he teaches Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities.