Poetry Writing Workshop!

I will be leading a midday (for those slackers out there like me who don't have a day job, this is perfect!) writers workshop in a couple of weeks at The Cell Theater.

The Cell: http://www.thecelltheatre.org/?p=projects

Fridays, 2-5:30pm.

A description of the workshop:


Workshop Location: The Cell Theater, NYC
Workshop Dates: February 20, 27, March 6, 13, 20, 27 *
Workshop Time: 3-5:30 pm
*Final reading featuring participants from the workshop to be announced later

About the workshop:

This poetry workshop is designed to facilitate creative thinking about our own lives in a historical and cultural context. Our today is history, tomorrow. Participants will be given select poems each week and asked to react to each piece through annotation, notes, or by beginning to compose lines for their own poems. Each meeting we will discuss artifacts (documents, pictures, music, artwork, etc) brought in that speak directly to the week's topic. There will be occasions to take the workshop out of the meeting space and into the rich cultural and historical surroundings, and use the observations as a springboard for creating and writing poems. In addition to making several nods towards writers long ago working in this art form, participants will be introduced to several contemporary multicultural poets who deal in and out of form, who write poems that rhyme or are far from it, but whose focus is to tell a story for tomorrow. We will consider the role of poetry as not only a vehicle of expression, but of impression – how one can allow a piece of creative writing to make a personal (or global) cultural and historical statement.

The purpose of this workshop is to garner a critical and creative lens towards writing and reading poetry, with the hopes that it will push the writer/reader to demand more. The space created by workshop participants and leaders will be one of comfort and safety – no attacks made on an individual person, culture, heritage, orientation will be tolerated.

Structure of the workshop: The first half of the class will be spent in discussion. We will discuss artifacts, poems, history, culture, etc. The second half will be spent workshopping and offering constructive critiques to individual poems brought in. Participants whose poems will be critiqued must be e-mailed to the instructor on _______________, prior to the workshop meeting.

Not a poet?! Not a problem. This workshop is to use poetry as a tool, a way of seeing. It is for all levels of writers – beginners to advanced. Our aim is to build an appreciation for poetry – by both reading and writing poems – while enriching our literary lives together. Some techniques discovered in the workshop will be able to cross over into fiction, non-fiction/personal essays/memoir and playwriting. Come and build with a community.

Participants will receive copies of the selected poems.


Guidelines:
E-mail five pages of poems (or five pages of your own writing if you do not self-identify as a poet) along with a very brief statement (in a single Microsoft Word document) about what you plan to accomplish in the workshop. Include contact info. Deliver to: delanaradameron @ gmail.com

DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 15, 2009 11:59PM


Workshop Leader
A native of Columbia, South Carolina, DéLana R.A. Dameron is the author of How God Ends Us, a collection of poems chosen by Elizabeth Alexander for the 2008 South Carolina Poetry Book Prize (University of South Carolina Press, 2009). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, PoemMemoirStory, 42opus, African American Review, Pembroke Magazine, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review among others. She is the recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem and Soul Mountain, and is a member of the Carolina African American Writer's Collective. A longtime lover of the intersections of history and literature, she holds a B.A. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dameron currently resides in New York City.

Amazon Pre-Order!

Google Alerts helps those who feel guilty about googling themselves do it hassle-free.

I got this updated link in my inbox last night.

http://www.amazon.com/Winner-South-Carolina-Poetry-Prize/dp/1570038325/r...

It's pretty cool. Some friends have already told me they pre-ordered the book. It's so amazing, this process. A little more than two more months!

Book Review & Updates and Links

A book review I wrote on Janice N. Harrintong's "Even the Hollow My Body Made is Gone" is up!

Check it and let me know what you think --

http://www.postnoills.com/main/?p=106

I'm also up on this site where you can list book tours:

http://www.booktour.com/author/delana_r_a_dameron

And while we're listing places you can find out about me....check the Red Room:

http://www.redroom.com/author/delana-ra-dameron

finally

This week has been amazingly great. Filled with good news and cool things to celebrate. Today I had cake in celebration....of everything.

Let's see -- Monday was really good because I got a lot of things organized and put together in my life. Which was necessary. I've been slowly plotting to transform my room into something that is functional and livable and workable (yes, i'm trying to bring my work into my living space..........i know. that's another post). This includes organizing. This included a trip to Staples and spending almost 50 bucks in office supplies. I still have more I need to spend. This weekend I'm supposed to buy a shredder and waste basket (don't ask how i've gone this long without either in my room).

Sometime soon I'm plotting on a new desk. Right now I'm using a card table, which, is actually pretty good as far as space given on the table top, but not so cool as far as space in my room goes.

Also necessary are bookshelves. Serious bookshelves. I've got books for days. Yes. That needs major work and organization.

Other good news this week -- Tuesday I got offered a free housing situation at AWP. Which I was plotting for and really really wanted. However, I cannot still afford. But it's nice to be given what you ask for, right?

Also on Tuesday I received, in my inbox, a jpeg of the cover of my book. It's becoming soo real now. Like everything is coming together so smoothly. That same day I was notified that a stack of fliers and two stand-up posters were going to be sent to my house this week. I've also been working on trying to figure out things for readings and creating a good path for my book to walk through, and in that -- talk about timing -- I scored a reading at the Center for Book Arts in NYC. Thomas Sayers Ellis is curating. More on that later. The reading is in May.

Anything else? I've been pretty busy with my two jobs. That is good...I am making a bit more money, getting some comfort and space between me and some things i want to do in the future. Learning my financial literacy, and finally stepping out of the summer deficit. and into a surplus.

Glamorous!

So. I must share with you here. The cover of my book is in. I hope you'll celebrate with me, and thank, too, Alexandra Cespedes for the amazing, stunning artwork.

Updates soon!

Back in the NYC

After a 16 hour train ride yesterday, I am back in New York City.

I think it's good to be back. I haven't decided yet. I left my car in South Carolina, and that was an important move for me, leaving something I became so attached to that it took a year and a half to decide I could survive without it.

Some interesting developments this new year/week: I received my foreword from Elizabeth Alexander for my book, my book now has an ISBN number and is already posted on Amazon.com and places like it...

I've also dusted off some of my short stories for a friend who said he'd love to read more of my writing. So I thought I'd give him some short stories. Which meant that I had to go back and look at them, and I found some gems that I had forgotten about. It's crazy, the body of work I have created in such a short time.

In a sense, part of me would love to see all of what I have right now that is publishable out in the world within the next five years...certainly before I'm 30 (which is not the same number :-p).

I have to venture out of the house in a few. Hit the ground running type venturing. Yep. Grades due Saturday and a lot of writing needs to be done between now and then.

happy Thursday!

Thinking, always, about Palestine

I want to start a conversation, please.

So I started this body of work about the Palestinian struggle back in early 2006. Some of you have heard or read snippets of this work as it has developed over the years. A friend of mine told me he has been thinking about me and Palestine over the last couple of days with the atrocities that are happening in Gaza/Israel.

Some background: the project is completely complied of persona poems in the "voices" of Palestinian civilians in occupied territories of Israel (Gaza, West Bank, East Jerusalem....). It is a continuation, of sorts, of my historical research paper at Chapel Hill based on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. (My degree is, after all Third World/Non-Western History) From there, I decided to explore how Palestinians portray themselves in Palestinian feature films based on the history of the conflict. What I discovered through this journey was that, given a chance to tell their own story (not filtered through "objective" media), Palestinians show an attempt to give light to the whole struggle. Namely, they are interested in showing the world that they, too, are humane, are civil, are.....people.

I had all of these narratives swimming in my head. Four films I used in my research are: The Tale of the Three Lost Jewels, The Roof, Wedding in Galilee, and The Olive Harvest. All are great movies. Mostly told around the two intifadas. There are other movies worth noting (Paradise Now)...however, I did not have a budget, so I was limited to what was available in the UNC Undergrad Library. If you're interested in reading more, I'd be more than happy to share my paper, or my bibliography.

For more personal and real stories, I became a constant reader of Palestinian blogs. It is as close to personal experiences and "chances to tell their own stories" as you can get. It is scary. There are pictures that the media won't show. It is life changing.

What also happened was this need to figure out my place in support of the conflict. How could I decide to hold someone else's story in my mouth, in my mind, in my hands? This is something I am still considering and will probably write more on later. But for right now, I want to remember the **people** of Palestine.

You can find some of my poems published online here:
http://www.thedrunkenboat.com/dameron.html

Here's 2 poems from my manuscript. Currently titled, "Casting stones". The first poem, "Gaza Ghazal" I wrote last spring. "Kites Court in Gaza and Rafah" I wrote Fall 2007.
----

Gaza ghazal



who lives in this prison, in this city under siege?
my mother, my father, my brother – all under siege

there is imminent, everlasting darkness, never light
your are paralyzed this way: under siege

children cry, their dry mouths, their empty hands –
they learn to live in sustained hunger under siege

the risks you take for your blood bound beyond the wall:
you crawl, snake through sewers, even those under siege

I long to touch the sea, to reach up and hold the last sky
only dreams – only dreams are allowed under siege

salaam to the birds, salaam to the clouds
salaam, I say, from the ground under siege

our fields have been razed, this harvest yields empty urns
no fruit – even our olive trees are trapped under siege

look the empty gravel streets – no one drives
these lonely roads through the city under siege

at the checkpoint, at the border, we are herded, held
we are cattle crowded in barbed-wire fences under siege

no medicines, no work, just humming fighter jet planes overhead
we are people prohibited from their freedom, living under siege

grandmother wants only to die in her home, with family
even if it means in her beloved city under siege

artillery shells cascade nightly in thunderous rain
don’t say it; don’t tell us to be patient here. Gaza’s under siege

(c) DeLana R.A. Dameron
-----


Kites court in Gaza and Rafah



The sky opened its mouth
to the noonday sun suspended

above us like a golden uvula.
We gather and the children bring

handmade kites – weightless shifters
of paper and string – to signal hellos

the way our faces cannot, dammed
behind this twelve foot wall.

The kites serve as an extension
of our bodies. They can kiss,

and touch. It is a privilege
our flesh yearns for – the warmth

of family, of love as an intimacy
not granted in war. We come

and forget the night: the qassam’s
percussive nightmares lighting curtains

with each blast. We remember
the limitations of iron walls

between our bodies and the exit wounds
of shrapnel shards from Merkava tanks

are gateways for the children’s’ fragile bones –
brave and small enough to slither between

the worlds we cannot see – making
the impossible crossover to Rafah and back.

Cousins, their laughter makes irrelevant
this barrier while, still, the roar of fighter jets,

the loud sputter of machine guns
echo around them.


(c) DeLana R.A. Dameron