THE WRITERS INSTITUTE
Marilyn Nelson
The Masked Poet: A Poetry Workshop
4 days: Wednesday, May 2 - Saturday, May 5,
9 a.m. - 12 noon
Course will take place at Miami Dade College, Wolfson Campus
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This workshop will tackle the persona poem and the dramatic monologue, and will begin with directed readings of several master poets, including Robert Browning, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Gwendolyn Brooks, Frank X Walker, and Helen Frost, seeking to understand their methods for inventing the speaker and the speaker's voice in a complexly-articulated, "believable" world. We will outline a sequence of poetic assignments, and then review poems from the workshop, considering them in light of our models.
Marilyn Nelson is the author or translator of fourteen books and five chapbooks. Her book The Homeplace won the 1992 Annisfield-Wolf Award and was a finalist for the 1991 National Book Award. The Fields Of Praise: New And Selected Poems won the 1998 Poets' Prize and was a finalist for the 1997 National Book Award, the PEN Winship Award, and the Lenore Marshall Prize. Carver: A Life In Poems won the 2001 Boston Globe/Hornbook Award and the Flora Stieglitz Straus Award, was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award, a Newbery Honor Book, and a Coretta Scott King Honor Book. Fortune's Bones was a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and won the Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry. Her young adult book, A Wreath For Emmett Till, won the 2005 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award and was a 2006 Coretta Scott King Honor Book, a 2006 Michael L. Printz Honor Book, and a 2006 Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award Honor Book. The Cachoiera Tales And Other Poems won the L.E. Phillabaum Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award.
She has also published collections of verse for children. Her honors include two NEA creative writing fellowships, the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award, an A.C.L.S. Contemplative Practices Fellowship, the Department of the Army's Commander's Award for Public Service, a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship, and a fellowship from the J.S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Date and Time
Wednesday, May 2 - Saturday, May 5
9 a.m. - 12 noon
This is a non-credit course.