FESTIVAL WORKSHOP: Poetry of Practice, with Tim Conroy and Susan Madison

Led by poets Tim Conroy and Susan Madison, this workshop will explore the poetry of practice, unpredictability, surprise, and image. Through daily practice, we suspend judgment and expectation and discover how the poem rises from what we observe—touch, taste, smell, hear, and see. The poetry of practice uses our idiosyncrasies, obsessions, passions, traumas, memories, and strong feelings to inform our poetry. Within this framework, we make sense of our human lives using figurative language and images to give a poem heartbeat. This is the poetry where the oppressed are forced to live in glass jars, a lamp turns on a father’s critical voice, struggle is the taste of black coffee, and the poem no one likes returns home grimy. Our poetry connects to the reader by blending details, sensory imagery, emotional depth, metaphors and similes, and philosophical elements. Even if you miss a day, a week, or a month, daily practice waits for you to make sense of your life and envision the world through poetry.

This is an in-person writers workshop, held at the Pat Conroy Literary Center as part of the annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival. Limited to 20 participants; $45/person.

About our instructors:

Tim Conroy, the author of the collections Theologies of Terrain and No True Route, is a poet and former educator. His work has appeared in Fall Lines, Blue Mountain Review, Jasper Magazine, Marked by the Water, Sheltered, Twelve Mile Review, Poetry on the Comet, The Post and Courier, Ukweli: Searching for Healing Truth, DWG Anthology, and Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy. 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 lives in Dunedin, Florida, with his wife Terrye.

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.

Host or Publisher Pat Conroy Literary Center Inc.