Feb 17-19, 2006
Poetry is where language discovers itself. It is so important, it’s a sacred practice; it maintains our capacity for contemplation and difficulty. One learns to write by reading, and a poet’s work is in conversation with other poets, past and present. Carolyn Forché stumbled into the honored profession of teaching unwittingly, but she loved it. She devotes extensive time to individual conferences and divides her larger classes into smaller affinity groups for discussions and the sharing of original work, so the classroom functions as a community.
We are accustomed to rather easy categories: we distinguish between “personal” and “political” poems – the former calling to mind lyrics of love and emotional loss, the latter indicating a public partisanship that is considered divisive, even when necessary. The celebration of the personal can induce an inability to see how larger structures circumscribe, if not determine, the fragile realm of the individual. We need a third term to describe the space between, so let us call this space “the social.”
Her own experiments have led her to create a new workshop focused on writing rather than critique. Following a talk on process, we will experiment with compositional exercises and experiments gathered from teaching poets from all over the world. We’ll learn new techniques for revision, guided writings, and performance. The focus will be on writing rather than on criticism of finished works, and Carolyn will share materials and methods she has learned, so we can continue writing at home. This workshop is designed for serious, practicing poets, including those experiencing “writers block,” as well as those who would like to try writing poetry for the first time. We are honored to welcome this outstanding poet and teacher on her first visit to Rowe.
Since the 1976 publication of her first book of poems, Gathering the Tribes, Carolyn Forché has been a major new voice in American poetry. She used a Guggenheim Fellowship to go to El Salvador, where she witnessed more instances of cold brutality and generosity of spirit than one might expect in several lifetimes. Archbishop Romero requested that she “talk to the American people. Tell them what is happening to us. Stop the military aid,” and she became a major voice in the 1980s about our Central American policies. The Country Between Us, The Angel of History, and Blue Hour are her other poetry books. She compiled and edited Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness, collecting the work of 145 poets writing in 31 languages who have “endured conditions of extremity during the 20th Century.” She translated Flowers from the Volcano and Sorrow by Claribel Alegria, The Selected Poems of Robert Desnos (with William Kulik), and Mahmoud Darwish’s Unfortunately, It Was Paradise (with Munir Akash). Her work has been translated into Russian, Greek, French, English, German, Swedish, Spanish, Japanese, Dutch, Farsi, Thai, Czech, Polish, and Slovak, among others. She has given readings all over the world and she teaches at Skidmore College.
“Latin America needs a poet to replace the man who represented in his writings the beauty, sufferings, fears, and dreams of this continent: Pablo Neruda. Carolyn Forché is that voice.”
— Jacobo Timerman
“Here’s a poet who’s doing what I want to do.”
— Denise Levertov