2024 Summer Workshops
Is there a mystic in you, a seeker longing to express potent insights? Using Rilke’s The Duino Elegies as a focal point, as well as poems by Elizabeth Bishop, Mark Doty, Linda Gregg, Ellen Hinsey, Rumi, and several others, this workshop is designed to celebrate and foster your individual spiritual expression through verse. In the wake of recent political events, many writers and readers have experienced a renewed sense of poetry’s sacred power for consolation and truth-telling amid chaos. How have you looked for spiritual meaning and revelation in your own work lately? Among the questions to be considered in this questing week-long summer workshop: if language is inherently dualistic, how do poets convey experiences and visions that go beyond our often polarized, everyday selves? Students are encouraged to share original work that emphasizes epiphany, oneness, and the link between the human and the divine.
Biography
Cyrus Cassells' poetry has been widely praised; he has received numerous accolades including a Pushcart Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, the National Poetry Series Prize, and the William Carlos Williams Award, as well as fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches poetry at the Texas State University for the MFA in writing program and lives in Austin.