“Well, if I’m Athena, you’re my Apollo—the god of poetry, truth, and music. Your natural language is poetry. You write sentences that are like an incantation. You observe every nuance of human behavior and dig deep down to the truth, presenting it in all its glorious and stubborn complexity.”—Barbra Streisand, letter to Pat Conroy (2015)

According to Pat Conroy, “the most powerful words in English are ‘Tell me a story.’” But to tell a story most powerfully, most memorably, he well understood that we need poetry, that we need to “write sentences that are like an incantation,” that we must stir up the flickering beauty of words as signal fires to line our path through those hard, complicated truths.

This poetry-writing workshop features three of the best writers—and teachers—of poetry across the contemporary South: Kate Daniels, Ray McManus, and Adam Vines. They will help participants learn how to tell a story…in verse. Each of these poets is a master of narrative poetry (i.e., poems that tell us a story). Their poems are about real things, real, understandable subjects (They don’t get lost in navel-gazing or bore us with philosophic gasbagging.); we know what they’re talking about because they’re talking to us, with us, in good clear voices. These three award-winning writers can turn a phrase and spin a yarn, both at the same time. Come learn from three expert narrative poets how to tell your story in verse.

Workshop Leaders: Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry editor Daniel Cross Turner and poets Kate Daniels, Ray McManus, and Adam Vines.

Ticket information:
Advance registration required, ticketed event – Buy Tickets Here

Limited to 25 participants