Registration Open for Bay to Ocean writers Conference
Registration for the 15th Annual Bay to Ocean Writers Conference, February 25, 2012 is now open. Check the website www.baytoocean.com for details. Featured speakers include TWC workshop leaders Kathryn Johnson, Laura Oliver, Lynn Schwartz, Khris Baxter, Angela Render, and Sue Ellen Thompson. Registration must be received by February 15, 2012.
On the website you will find session descriptions and brief bios of the instructors. You can print out a schedule for the day to help you plan your day; however, it is not necessary to sign up for individual sessions.
At this conference we’ll have 28 excellent session leaders giving presentations on many topics relating to the art and business of writing. Whether you’re interested in learning the craft of writing, utilizing digital tools for writers, getting your work published and marketed, or any of the other writing related topics offered, the Bay to Ocean Writers Conference definitely has something for everyone.
Fees have stayed the same as we are aware of the impact of the economy on everyone: $89 for adults and $55 for students with ID. Your registration fee includes a deluxe continental breakfast, a networking lunch and five sessions chosen from 25 offerings.
Early registration is strongly encouraged as the conference has sold out in advance the last six years.
Showing posts with label Sue Ellen Thompson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sue Ellen Thompson. Show all posts
Friday, December 2, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
TWC Members Contribute to The Delmarva Review
The Eastern Shore Writers’ Association released the fourth edition of The Delmarva Review on Sept. 26, 2011. Several instructors and members of The Writer’s Center, including Poet Lore editor E. Ethelbert Miller, have contributed to the new edition. The Review highlights original poetry, short stories, and nonfiction from writers in the Chesapeake region, although work from writers outside the region is also eligible. The new edition is expanded from previous editions, including five short stories, 28 poems, three essays, and five reviews of recent notable books.
Featured work by TWC contributors includes Ken Ackerman (book review), Kate Blackwell (book review), J. Wesley Clark, Nan Fry, E. Ethelbert Miller, Richard Peabody, and Sue Ellen Thompson.
The 2011 issue is for sale at The Writer’s Center as well as regional bookstores, including the News Center in Easton, Mystery Loves Company in Oxford, Creative Xpressions, in St. Michaels. Single issues are $10 each. Two-year subscriptions are $18. An order form can be downloaded from the website: www.delmarvareview.com.
On Sunday Dec. 4 at 5 pm, The Delmarva Review will hold a reading at TWC.
Fiction writers are also encouraged to enter the Delmarva Review Short Story Prize Contest, which concludes on Nov. 1. Details can be found at www.delmarvareview.com
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Sue Ellen Thompson on Sound Effects in Poetry
When I first heard my teacher at Middlebury College read the opening lines of Wallace Stevens’s poem, “Autumn Refrain”—
The skreak and skritter of evening gone
And grackles gone and sorrows of the sun,
The sorrows of sun, too, gone…the moon and moon,
The yellow moon of words about the nightingale
In measureless measures, not a bird for me
But the name of a bird and the name of a nameless air
I have never—shall never hear…
--I knew that sound played a magical, musical role in poetry. In those two harsh, made-up words—skreak and skritter—lay the essence of autumn, of brittle leaves blowing over bare pavement. Stevens uses alliteration as well as repetition of whole words and phrases to underscore the melancholy and inevitable nature of the season, and in the end I cared less about what the poem meant than about how it felt in my mouth as I read it aloud.
When I started writing my own poems several years later, I failed to understand how sound could be used to embody and convey my feelings. I suppose I thought that if I occasionally threw alliteration or repetition into a poem, I had paid my dues. To go beyond that seemed forced and manipulative. I think it was because sound, to me, was merely a surface effect—not a deep, visceral one.
In my Oct. 9 workshop, “What Sound Effects Can Do for Your Poetry,” I will talk about some contemporary poems in which sound plays a crucial role. I will introduce workshop participants to the link between certain vowel or consonant sounds and human emotions, and I’ll explain how choosing words on the basis of not just what they mean but how they sound can help a poet convey his or her feelings in a more subtle, convincing way.
The sound effects I will examine in detail include assonance, consonance, alliteration, anaphora, internal rhyme, and onomatopoeia. These are among the most basic and essential tools that all poets should know how to use. Whether you’re new to poetry or have been at it for years, this workshop will give you something to think about the next time you sit down to write.
Sue Ellen Thompson is the instructor for the upcoming What Sound Effects Can Do for Your Poems workshop at TWC on Sunday 10/9. Sign up for her workshop here.
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Sue Ellen Thompson (www.sueellenthompson.com) is the author of four books of poetry, most recently The Golden Hour (2006), and the editor of The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry. Her work has been included in the Best American Poetry series, read on National Public Radio by Garrison Keillor, and featured in U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s nationally syndicated newspaper column. She taught at Wesleyan University, Middlebury College, Binghamton University, and Central Connecticut State University before moving to the Eastern Shore in 2006. She was awarded the 2010 Maryland Author Prize from the Maryland Library Association and will be teaching at the University of Delaware in the spring.
The skreak and skritter of evening gone
And grackles gone and sorrows of the sun,
The sorrows of sun, too, gone…the moon and moon,
The yellow moon of words about the nightingale
In measureless measures, not a bird for me
But the name of a bird and the name of a nameless air
I have never—shall never hear…
--I knew that sound played a magical, musical role in poetry. In those two harsh, made-up words—skreak and skritter—lay the essence of autumn, of brittle leaves blowing over bare pavement. Stevens uses alliteration as well as repetition of whole words and phrases to underscore the melancholy and inevitable nature of the season, and in the end I cared less about what the poem meant than about how it felt in my mouth as I read it aloud.
When I started writing my own poems several years later, I failed to understand how sound could be used to embody and convey my feelings. I suppose I thought that if I occasionally threw alliteration or repetition into a poem, I had paid my dues. To go beyond that seemed forced and manipulative. I think it was because sound, to me, was merely a surface effect—not a deep, visceral one.
In my Oct. 9 workshop, “What Sound Effects Can Do for Your Poetry,” I will talk about some contemporary poems in which sound plays a crucial role. I will introduce workshop participants to the link between certain vowel or consonant sounds and human emotions, and I’ll explain how choosing words on the basis of not just what they mean but how they sound can help a poet convey his or her feelings in a more subtle, convincing way.
The sound effects I will examine in detail include assonance, consonance, alliteration, anaphora, internal rhyme, and onomatopoeia. These are among the most basic and essential tools that all poets should know how to use. Whether you’re new to poetry or have been at it for years, this workshop will give you something to think about the next time you sit down to write.
Sue Ellen Thompson is the instructor for the upcoming What Sound Effects Can Do for Your Poems workshop at TWC on Sunday 10/9. Sign up for her workshop here.
*
Sue Ellen Thompson (www.sueellenthompson.com) is the author of four books of poetry, most recently The Golden Hour (2006), and the editor of The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry. Her work has been included in the Best American Poetry series, read on National Public Radio by Garrison Keillor, and featured in U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s nationally syndicated newspaper column. She taught at Wesleyan University, Middlebury College, Binghamton University, and Central Connecticut State University before moving to the Eastern Shore in 2006. She was awarded the 2010 Maryland Author Prize from the Maryland Library Association and will be teaching at the University of Delaware in the spring.
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