I Speak in Tongues of Many workshop Sonia Farmer + Shivanee Ramlochan
The NAGB in collaboration with the University of The Bahamas (UB) and the 2019 Blue Flamingo Literary Festival presents a 2-day workshop on collaborative process and bookmaking with Sonia Farmer and acclaimed Trinidadian poet, Shivanee Ramlochan.
The workshop will take place on Thursday, March 21st, 2019: 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm and on Friday, March 22nd, 2019: 10:00 am - 2:00 pm. I Speak in Tongues of Many is open to the general public for a fee of $40.00 and there are a limited number of spaces available (10). 10 FREE spaces are available to UB students and faculty. I Speak in Tongues of Many will take place in the The Michael H Eldon Boardroom, 3rd floor of the Michael Eldon Building on UB's Oakes Field Campus. Registration and complete details about the workshop and outcomes can be found here.
All payments are to be made at the NAGB Mixed Media Store by March 20th and NAGB members receive up to a 10% discount.
Day 1: I Speak in Tongues of Many with Shivanee Ramlochan
How we Collaborate with Every Writer We’ve Ever Loved: A Seminar Workshop in Claiming Your Poetic Tribe as An Act of Honouring Your Voice
Contemporary Caribbean poets often hold writers of the poetic canon at a remove of adulation. We can cite Walcott, Goodison, Senior, Brand, yet are often shy or reticent to point out how their poems influence and inspire our current writing. In this intensive, interactive seminar, we will explore (re)claiming your poetic voice with all its influences on proud display. We will examine how a polyglottal inheritance in reading poetry, and an understanding of poetry as community space, furnishes us with the tools to be the best writers of our poems. The three-hour session will cover:
· Why has collaboration become persona non grata in written poetry: a brief overview of the history of writing in groups, and how prize culture often steals the enthusiasm to team up in the name of verse;
· What we gain through collaboration: a guided first-hand insight into partnering with Sonia Farmer in producing The Red Thread Cycle installation at NAGB;
· Eddie Baugh to the Backstreet Boys: how everything you absorb, for better or worse, influences you on the page and stage, even when you least realise it;
· Exploring the link between poetic influence and poetic style, including its murky definitions: what is the difference between homage and plagiarism? How do we write poems as a tribute, as offertory, as instinctive inclination in the footsteps of another, without outright theft?
· How un/sub/conscious and overt collaborations across genres sustain and inform both our collective and individual poetic practice: a case study in Douen Islands;
· When have you been a collaborator, and not even known it? Poring over your favourite poems with attention to the voices, registers and styles of others, lingering within;
· “Collaboration creates a clearing in the wilderness”: participants will engage with each others’ work in a guided process designed to generate new poems and creative forms;
· Carrying on collaboratively: tools for eliding the alleged superiority of individualism, while still creating work that is authentically, purposefully one’s own.
· All participants will receive, at the workshop’s conclusion, a document of workshop notes, links to audiovisual material, and a free offer of one-time written feedback on poems produced in the session.
Technical Notes, Requirements, Provisions:
Participants will be asked to bring at least one poem of their own, as well as one of their favourite poems from any Caribbean writer.
The workshop facilitator will be granted access to a list of participants’ names and preferred pronouns, at least 12 hours before workshop commences.
The workshop will establish and maintain a zero-tolerance stance on hate speech of any kind, in any form, directed to the workshop facilitator or its participants.
Books by the workshop facilitator will be made available to workshop attendees for purchase (books brought in and managed by Ramlochan).
Materials required: participants should bring their stationery and/or word processors.
Day 2 with Sonia Farmer: Collaborative Processes: Text and Book
What does it mean to be in collaboration—is simply the act of working with others a collaborative process? What about the very act of writing—collaborating with found language or image? What about collaborating with our readers—how can the way we present our narratives make the readers part of forming the story? In this class, we will explore various processes to generate and present text. Interacting with our classmates and also working on our own, we will try several collaborative and experimental prompts to form narratives. Using hands-on tutorials, we will also explore the book structure as a storytelling tool that challenges the fixed and linear trope of reading.
Text explorations: erasure; one-word exchange; stamp prompt; and exquisite corpse
Book structure explorations: 8 pages/ 1 sheet; ox-plow book; accordion; Turkish map fold; snake book; fold-out book, French fold.
