Workshops

Monika Rose

Monika Rose is Founder/Facilitator of Writers Unlimited, San Andreas, affiliated with the Calaveras County Arts Council, Editor of Manzanita: Poetry and Prose of the Mother Lode and Sierra, a published poet and fiction writer, and Delta College English Adjunct Instructor. Her workshop, “Poetry Digs: Mining Raw Material,” focuses on learning some great techniques for mining material to convert into poems that project ideas and thoughts trapped in your subconscious. Various methods of utilizing research material, articles, books, internet tools, and other sources to extract raw material used to create poetry drafts will be shown and then a revision process will be fashioned. In 1 and ½ hours duration, the workshop participant will create a rough and then second edited draft (if time allows) of one or more poems utilizing exercises presented in the workshop.

Poets on the Roof

Poets on the Roof is a poetry workshop that has been held monthly for well over a year including Donald R. Anderson, Patricia Ann Mayorga, Roger E. Naylor, Elizabeth J. Parrish, Shonda Renée, Marie J. Ross, Gail Lee White, and Stephen M. Wilson. Their workshop, “Writing and Critiquing Group Poems,” focuses on word prompts and various activities of collaborative writing and editing of poems together.

Mabel "Jimi" Choice

Ms. Mable “Jimi” Choice is an author, poet, and artist who is active and well known in the community. Jean Claude Crhi, who will accompany her, is a cultured and knowlegeable percussionist and poet. Her poetry workshop focuses on getting to the root of why one writes, then writing from sentence starter-prompts, and read their works out loud for positive feedback.

Richard Rios

Richard Rios is a poet, musician and an artist, working in a community of artists called Artistas del Valle. His workshop focuses on introducing participants to a variety of poetic styles, literary devices, and basic tools for success in writing poetry, such as rhyme, free verse, using the stanza, line arrangement/design, topic selection, drafts, editing/revision, figurative language: similes and metaphors, bilingual poetry, and archiving work. The second hour, individuals will be allowed to write a short poem and I will be available for one-to-one guidance, and if time remains, participants will be invited to share their poem with the group.

Michael C. Ford

Michael C. Ford's 1987 Grammy nomination was for his spoken word and music vinyl disc Language Commando. His debut spoken word vinyl {on SST} LANGUAGE COMMANDO earned a Grammy nomination in 1986. His book of Selected Poems EMERGENCY EXITS was honored by a 1998 Pulitzer Prize nomination. Between June of 1969 and December of 1998, he has collaborated in concert with Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, Robby Kreiger, Jimmy Witherspoon, D Boon, Mike Watt, John Dentino, Exene Cervenka, Henry Rollins, Debra Ash, Jello Biafra, Mama Lion, Ruth Price: among other singer songwriters. He has produced a steady stream of print and recorded product since 1970. His songwriting workshop focuses on, essentially, providing sensory exercises, as associated with previously recorded rhythm patterns, melodic structures and chord changes. A composer’s accumulation of sensory images is designed to enrich the projected original lyricism beyond the predictable leery schism of the usual rhymed cliché.

Michael Duffett

Michael Duffett, internationally-published poet, whose work appeared in England, the U.S., Japan, India and New Zealand, is the “guest poet” of the Stockton Symphony. His publications include literary criticism, fiction and journalism. He considers the commitment to poetry as a quest and a question. He will examine, by means of hands-on creative exercises with participants, the mystery and satisfaction of the creative process and those who participate are guaranteed to emerge with at least three fully-fledged poems, ready to fly! He begins his examination of poetry by means of a 3000-year-old African folktale, then moves into ancient Greece and finally into a consideration of an historical event of contemporary times. This will elucidate the matter of the content of poetry and he will then move on to considerations of form, with examples from Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, John Keats, and William Shakespeare.

Roger E. Naylor

Roger E. Naylor has become in the past decade a prolific poet who specializes in research and archaic flotsam and jetsam, with some that are sure to last historically beyond our lifetime. His workshop, “In The Mind Of The Poet: The Art Of Poetical Research,” focuses on providing a brief background in basic research resources and materials necessary to produce a quality poem, to introduce the “writerly” to poetical research, and to conduct an occasion poem exercise—Poem of The Day, Time, Place.