FESTIVAL WORKSHOP: Firing the Clay, with Tim Conroy and Susan Madison

In this writing workshop led by Tim Conroy and Susan Madison (and possibly featuring a celebrity cameo), poets will explore approaches to revision, considering the content and sound of each word, line, and stanza of each poem. Do you need to lower expectations to generate your first draft? Do you allow the poem to discover its true beginning? Do the prepositional phrases stall the poem into a nosedive? Do your verbs disappoint your poems? Are the adverbs really necessary? Does the poem need its current chronology? Have you played Jenga with the poem to discover its own vision? Does the reader glide across the poem’s dance floor? The workshop challenges the poet to break habits and let revision bring tomorrow’s light and lens to the poem.

The workshop aims to clarify and challenge our identity as poets, to elevate poems through improving habits and engaging in playful revision, to risk failure from disassembling and reassembling for the chance to discover what the clay can reveal, and to forget expectations for an opportunity to find the soul, form, and sound of a better poem. This workshop seeks the poem that's revealed only through the act of revision, while gladly admitting that some poems fall from the sky from pencils of light. We take solace in rigorous revision, knowing if we break it, we can return to its best version or shove the poem in the sock drawer for a month.

Part of the 10th annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival, this is an in-person writers workshop, held at the Pat Conroy Literary Center (601 Bladen St). Limited to 14 participants with advance registration required; $75/person.

Tools for the Workshop: Bring your lucky pen or pencil, highlighter, and a notebook for brainstorming and revising activities. Please print copies of 3 poems that need revising. Let's maneuver, choose, experiment, distill, rejoice, and operate.

Recommended Readings:

Writing in the Lineage of Poetry by Miriam Sagan

Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils of Art Making by David Bayles and Ted Orland

The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction by Dean Young

The Art of Writing by Lu Chi’s Wen Fu, translated by Sam Hamill

Disclosure: This workshop wouldn’t have been possible without the insights and poems of the poet Georgia Popoff who inspires countless poets to examine their revision practices. Georgia Popoff's books include Psalter: The Agnostic's Book of Common Curiosities (Tiger Bark Press, 2015), The Doom Weaver (Main Street Rag Publications, 2008), and Coaxing Nectar From Longing (Hale Mary Press, 1997).

About our instructors:

Tim Conroy, the author of the collections Theologies of Terrain and No True Route, is a former special educator. His poems have been included in numerous journals, compilations, and anthologies. His poems often explore themes of family and nature, incorporating philosophical elements. In 2022, he received the Broad River Prize for prose from Fall Lines, Volume IX. A founding board member of the Pat Conroy Literary Center, established in his brother’s honor, Tim recently moved with his wife Terrye to the beautiful town of Beaufort, South Carolina

Susan River Madison is an essayist and poetic advocate whose themes explore the pilgrimage of the people of the African Diaspora and the collective feminine soul, and whose work promotes a free and just standard of living for all. Susan’s work has been published in Chicken Soup for the African American Soul, the anthology UKWELI Searching for Healing Truths, Low Country Weekly and various other publications. The author of two chapbooks, she holds a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Antioch University. Originally from Chicago, Madison lives on St. Helena Island. She is currently working on a collection of poetry.

Festival Guest Instructor -- to be anounced.

Host or Publisher Pat Conroy Literary Center Inc.