All workshops: $195

Any 3 workshops: $125

Individual workshops: $50 each;
Select Below

Lee Gurga presents "Haiku, Poetry of the Season"

Why is haiku the world’s most popular form of poetry? This workshop is the place to find out why millions of people find haiku both irresistible and enlightening. Lee will show you the only book you need to write haiku (not his!) and his workshop will allow you to advance from novice to adept in a single afternoon.

LEE GURGA is an award-winning haiku poet and editor of Modern Haiku, the oldest and most respected journal of haiku and haiku studies outside Japan, as well as haiku columnist for Solares Hill newspaper in Key West, Florida.

He is a past president of the Haiku Society of America. His books In & Out of Fog and Fresh Scent were awarded “First Prize” in the Haiku Society of America Book Awards; his Haiku: A Poet’s Guide was recognized by the HSA as the “Best Book of Criticism” for 2004. He has assisted Japanese poet Emiko Miyashita in the translation of four books of Japanese haiku, two of which were recognized with a “Best Book of Translations” award by the Haiku Society of American. He was awarded an Illinois Arts Council Poetry Fellowship for his work in haiku in 1998. He was the guest speaker at the fifteenth anniversary celebration of the Haiku International Association in Tokyo in November 2005. He lives and works as a general dentist in the farming community of Lincoln, Illinois

Noon - 1:15 PM

Heritage House

Lunch With Elizabeth Bishop

Scholar and poet, Annette Basalyga discusses famed Key West Poet, Elizabeth Bishop. Basalyga says,"For Elizabeth Bishop, Key West was a 'Geographical Mirror' of the world whose beauty and spirit she poured into many of her poems." Lunch and learn about the Key West years that shaped her writing.

$10 includes a box lunch from Small Chef at Large

1:30 - 4:00 PM

Truman Little White House

Rosalind Brakenbury presents "The Poem as a Suitcase (or Backpack?)"

What do we take with us for the journey and how do we pack it? ie looking hard at what we put in and what we leave out, and whether it will translate to another place or time. Most poems should be hand luggage, I think. (Is this just because I've been travelling so much?) Really, it's about putting in what really matters and having the courage to leave stuff out.

ROSALIND BRACKENBURY was born in London, grew up in the south of England, has lived in Scotland and France and now lives in Key West, Florida, with her American husband, the writer Alan Meece. She has published eleven novels, three of which are currently available. The Circus at the End of the World is set in Australia and is about a boy searching for his mother, who is a circus performer. Seas Outside the Reef is a love story which bridges the political divide of the US and Cuba and is set in Key West. Both are from Daniel & Daniel, California, as is a new collection of short stories, Between Man and Woman Keys. Her most recent novel, The House in Morocco (Toby Press) was released in March 2003.

Ms. Brackenbury is a published poet with five poetry collections to her name, the latest of which, Yellow Swing: Poems, contains many poems of travel and romance. Her previous collection, The Beautiful Routes of the West is largely about discovering the Florida Keys. She is a member of the Key West Authors' Co-op, whose most recent collection, Mango Summers, came out in 2002. She has worked variously as a parent, teacher, writer in residence, newspaper columnist and deck hand on a schooner.

9:00 - 11:30 AM

Oldest House Museum Garden

Charles Trumbull presents "Haiku Diction "

Haiku ihas been described as the "wordless poem." Because of the genre's extreme brevity and non-Western origins, the haiku poet uses language with extreme economy and employs techniques that are very different from those used in crafting Wastern-style poems. In this workshop we will explore the poetics and aesthetics of English-language haiku, concentrating on questions of simplicity and succinctness of language, levels of poetic diction and choice of words, the use of metaphor and simile, the importance of season words and other means of allusion, and related questions of the haiku craft. Come prepared to write and rewrite!

CHARLES TRUMBULL was born in Michigan, grew up in New Mexico, and was educated at Yale and Notre Dame universities. Trained as a specialist in the foreign policy of the Soviet Union, he worked in jobs that had to do with American-Russian communication at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Inc.. When the U.S.S.R. disappeared, he jumped over to a job as Director of Yearbooks at Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., in Chicago, where he remained until retirement in 2007. He lives in Evanston, Ill Charlie got reacquainted with haiku in 1991, literally on a bet. Immediately bitten by the haiku bug, he has since served as newsletter editor (1996–2002) and president (2004–05) of the Haiku Society of America, a founder of Chi-ku, the Chicago-area haiku club, an organizer of Haiku North America—Chicago (2001), a biannual continent-wide gathering of haiku poets, and proprietor of Deep North Press, a publisher of haiku books with 14 titles in print. Since March 2006 he has been editor of Modern Haiku, the oldest haiku journal outside Japan.

Noon - 1:15 PM

Heritage House

Lunch With Robert Frost

Frost Scholar and poet, Michael Wyndham Thomas, discusses Frost's life and work and the Key West years. Learn about Frost's formative years as a poet in England and what drew him to Key West later in life.

$10 includes a box lunch from Small Chef at Large

1:30 - 4:00 PM

Heritage House

Annette Basalyga presents "Compose Yourself"

This workshop will address the problems of drafting, and revising poems, with the goal of fostering a degree of comfort, maybe even pleasure, in the writing process. We will ask why we write some poems with ease, others in teeth-grinding misery.Well look at ways of strengthening our powers of observation, drawing on our memories, and stretching our imaginations.To energize our poetry, we will borrow narrative techniques, play with humor and irony.Come to the workshop prepared to generate your own poems and supportively critique those of others.We'll be sharing what works for us in jump-starting composition—with less suffering, more enjoyment.

ANNETTE BASALYGA was a fellow at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop where she received an M.F.A. in poetry.  She has taught at the University of Puerto Rico, Penn State,  Worthington Campus,, and as Lecturer of Distinction, at Marywood University, also in Pennsylvania. Among the awards she has received are an Individual Artist’s Grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a Duncan Lawrie Prize from the Arvon Foundation, London, and publication in Borestone Mountain Poetry Awards.  She was a visiting artist  for the Paumanok Poets Series and received first prize in the Chester H. Jones Foundation Poetry Competition.  Most recently, she was resident poet at The Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska.  Her poems have been published in numerous journals including  Commonweal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Columbia, Comstock Review, The Hollins Critic, Iconoclast, The New Orleans Review, North American Review and Verbatim. Her work has been anthologized in The Palpable Clock and in The Pater Yearbook of American Poetry . She lives in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

9:00 - 11:30 AM

USS Mohawk

Michael Wyndham Thomas on "Freewriting: An Explorer's Guide"

Was T. S Eliot a freewriter? Was Walt Whitman? No-one can say for certain, but what is true is that they and many other poets have seen the great value of what has been called ‘mental rioting’: following ideas, images, even single words in an uninterrupted flow, to see where they lead, what images and poems are waiting at the other end. In this workshop, we shall be exploring the benefits of freewriting as a first—and crucial—stage in the development of a poem that says exactly what we wish it to. We shall be associating words freely, seeing which words they want to hook up with, stoking trains of thought and then jumping aboard. Our starting points might be anything: a colour, a time of day, a season, a scrap of dialogue, a half-forgotten place. We may take our cue from a phrase:
The truth of the matter is . . .
I wish I’d never said . . .
When I drew back the curtains I saw . . .
Suddenly, after all these years . . .
I wasn’t expecting that . . .
Freewriting may feel strange at first. You may wonder what kind of poem could possibly emerge from such an uncontrolled mess of words. But freeing yourself to write in this way is an invaluable first step to creating something that really sings on the page—and that’s exactly what we’ll be aiming for!

MICHAEL W THOMAS is originally from Staffordshire, England, and lived in Canada for a number of years. He is a poet, fiction-writer, songwriter, musician and dramatist, with over twenty-five years’ experience of publication and involvement with creative writing. His work has appeared in The English Review, English, Stand, Iron, Other Poetry, Staple, The Interpreter's House, The Swansea Review (all UK), as well as in Grain and Alive Magazine (Canada), Irish University Review (Dublin), Etchings (Australia) and Magazine Six, Modern Haiku, Muscadine Lines, The Secret of Salt and The AntiochReview (USA); and he is also published in Albania! He also reviews for OtherPoetry, Poetry Nottingham and Raw Edge Magazine (UK) and Irish StudiesReview. Michael was awarded first prize in the 1998 Housman Society poetry competition, and has also gained recognition in the Stand Magazine International Short Fiction competition, the Yorkshire Open competition, two Poets Anonymous competitions and numerous others. His novel, The Song of the Sun is due for publication; another novel, The Mercury Annual, is published by Silver Age; and his full-length play, Assumption Eve--a dramatization of 'the Miracle of St Wulstan,' Worcester's patron saint--is to be performed as part of the Three Choirs’ Festival in the English Midlands. His latest poetry collection is forthcoming from Peterloo Poets in 2009, and his CD, Seventeen Poems and a Bit of A Song, has sold well in the UK and abroad. He has also been recording work for a 'Poetry Podcast' programme in the West Midlands, with an audience in Britain, Europe and the US. Michael runs workshops for schools and writers’ groups and is currently a tutor on the Creative Writing modules offered by the Open University for students in the UK and Europe. Website: www.michaelwthomas.co.uk

12:30-3:00 PM

Heritage House

Richard Grusin on "How to Read Your Poetry to the Audience"

This workshop was well received at its inaugural session during the 2005 Robert frost Poetry Festival. Who better to teach you how to read your poetry to the public than an actor? Richard will help you reach back to the feeling you had when you wrote the poem so that when you read your poetry - the poem you felt is what the people hear.

RICHARD GRUSIN is a versatile and popular local actor. In Key West he has appeared at every major venue, including the Red Barn, Waterfront Playhouse and Tennessee Williams Theater. Audiences will remember outstanding performances in Proof, Memory of Water, as Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, as Roy Cohen in Angels in America, Art, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, as Truman Capote in Tru and in Sylvia. He directed the Chekhov Comedies and Ancestral Voices at The Red Barn. Before coming to Key West he was a member of The Guthrie Theatre Acting Company for six years. He was a founding member of The American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass., and a member of The Yale Repertory Theatre. He has appeared at The Public Theatre in New York as well as The Goodman Theatre in Chicago. His television credits include Spencer for Hire, The Equalizer; RyanÕs Hope and several mini-series on PBS. In film, Richard appeared in Born on the Fourth of July, Lean on Me, and See You in the Morning and The Mighty Ducks. He is a graduate of The Goodman School of Drama at The Art Institute of Chicago and The Yale School of Drama. He teaches diving and is captain of a dive boat for Lost Reef Adventures. Richard also hosts a morning talk show, CrusinÕ with Grusin, on Sunday mornings 9am to 10, for US 1 Radio 104.1 FM.