Last year at this time, talented poet Barbara Huntington offered her lovely home/art gallery/gardens to Jim Moreno for a poetry workshop. Moreno drove to Bonita to check out the surroundings: “There were all these beautiful Monarch butterflies floating on the breeze. The Milkweed drew them to Barbara’s gardens where there were chairs, shade, and shelters to reflect and write. Her house/gallery was like a charming library with artifacts from around the world. I realized I was being offered a beautiful temple for a poetry writing pilgrimage by Barbara. I was as charmed as you will be.”, offered Moreno.
In “Teaching a Stone to Talk” & Other Conversations”, Jim Moreno, with a background of Barbara’s poetry temple, will portray Annie Dillard’s poetic prose as the foundation for this poem-making class. Dillard’s “Teaching A Stone to Talk” and “Pilgrim At Temple Creek” will be building blocks towards this interesting poetry genre for workshop participants. Beginning or seasoned poets will also be able to compare diverse examples of prose poetry of other authors starting with Danielle Mitchell’s definition: . A prose poem is a poem written in sentences. It appears as a block of text without line breaks. You could think of a prose poem as a bowl or a box with poetry inside. Despite the look of the prose poem its ultimate goal is to retain its poetic qualities.
Join Jim Moreno for this exercise in creating your poetry bowl with examples from prompts, video clips, and Jim’s anecdotes that come from his reading examples of prose poetry. These examples inspired him and, he hopes, will inspire you to write your own original prose poems. Participants will also be encouraged to publish or continue to publish if you are already in print.