TANGENTIAL FIGURES: Poetry Reading and Writing Workshop
Just as some artists find it difficult to draw or paint people, some poets find it difficult to write about them. We have so much information about those we know well, and so many feelings about them, that we often don’t know where to begin, or which details to choose and which to leave out. Writing about people tangential to your life—a piano teacher, a babysitter, a barber, a neighbor, a mailman, etc.—might be a little easier, not only because there are fewer details but also because there’s more room for the imagination to fill in the gaps. In this workshop we’ll be reading and discussing poems about people once removed from the poem’s speaker, and then writing our own poems about tangential figures.
About Jeffrey Harrison:
Jeffrey is the author of seven books of poetry, beginning with The Singing
Underneath, selected by James Merrill for the National Poetry Series in 1987, and
including Feeding the Fire, winner of the Sheila Motton Award from the New
England Poetry Club, Incomplete Knowledge, runner-up for the Poets’ Prize, Into
Daylight, winner of the Dorset Prize, and Between Lakes, chosen as a 2021 Must-Read
Book by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. He has received fellowships from the
Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Bogliasco
Foundation, among other honors. His poems have appeared multiple times in Best
American Poetry and the Pushcart Prize volumes; been translated into Bulgarian, Italian,
Norwegian, and Portuguese; and been set to music by several composers and performed
at the National Opera Center, the Boston Athenaeum, and other venues. His essay “The
Story of a Box,” about Marcel Duchamp and his family (first published in The Common),
was listed as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2024. He lives in Massachusetts.
Cost is $25. Must register to attend. Limited to 10 participants.
