Intensive Residential Poetry Workshop with ROSS GAY

PoetryYard’s Intensive Residential Workshop Description:

PoetryYard’s Intensive Residential Workshop offers students of poetry a rare opportunity to work closely with a nationally celebrated poet in a small group workshop-style format. In this three-day residency, poets who seek to deepen their commitment to their craft will attend four workshops totaling nine and a half hours (see schedule below) focusing on the questions the workshop leader wishes to explore. This might include manuscript preparation or it might include exploring another writer’s work, or it might include generative exercises to unlock creative possibilities. But the common thread will be that the group will gather to think about, to be in, poetry together.

Poets will be staying in a beautiful residency house in the scenic river town of Frenchtown, NJ, free from the distractions and limitations that so often limit our creative lives. They will each have their own room, sharing two bathrooms among the five participants. A spacious well-equipped kitchen and open living room provide space for collaboration—in art and food.

Cost of Program: $1000, includes four workshop sessions, three nights lodging, continental breakfast and the opportunity to join fellow participants and the national poet for a reading at the close of the program.

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ROSS GAY www.rossgay.com

Ross Gay is the author of three books: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Catalog was also a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry, the Ohioana Book Award, the Balcones Poetry Prize, the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award, and it was nominated for an NAACP Image Award.

Ross is the co-author, with Aimee Nezhukumatathil, of the chapbook "Lace and Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens," in addition to being co-author, with Richard Wehrenberg, Jr., of the chapbook, "River." He is a founding editor, with Karissa Chen and Patrick Rosal, of the online sports magazine Some Call it Ballin', in addition to being an editor with the chapbook presses Q Avenue and Ledge Mule Press. Ross is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Ross teaches at Indiana University.
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