Generative Poetry Workshop: Poetry & Photography

Generative Poetry Workshop: Poetry & Photography

Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Marcus Jackson, and Iain Haley Pollock will run a workshop that uses photographic images to help generate poems & poetic images.  Pollock will present “mentor texts”—examples of ekphrastic poems that seek to interpret photographic images.  Griffiths and Jackson will choose photographs to which workshop participants can respond.  After writing for an hour, workshop participants will have the opportunity to share their work with the group.  

Participants in this workshop are expected to also register for and attend the “Poetry Reading & Talk: An Interpretation of the Real: Poetry & Photography” which runs from 1pm to 2:30pm. Registration is free and can be made at: https://bethanyarts.org/calendar/poetry-reading-talk-an-interpretation-of-the-real-poetry-photography/

Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet, visual artist, and novelist. Her hybrid collection of poetry and photography, Seeing the Body (W.W. Norton), was published in 2020. Other poetry collections by Griffiths include Lighting the Shadow (Four Way Books, 2015), The Requited Distance (Sheep Meadow Press, 2011), Mule & Pear (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2011), and Miracle Arrhythmia (Willow Books, 2010). As a visual artist, Griffiths is the creator of Poets on Poetry (P.O.P), an intimate series of interviews, which gathers more than fifty contemporary poets together in conversation to discuss poetry in relation to individual human experience and culture. Her forthcoming debut novel, Promise, will be published by Random House. She lives in New York City. 

Marcus Jackson
Marcus Jackson is a widely published photographer and writer who holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from New York University. Marcus specializes in portraiture shot on location with mostly natural or available light. His photographs capture the organic beauty and complexity of people and places. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine, among other publications. His chapbook, Rundown, was published by Aureole Press in 2009. His debut full-length collection of poems, entitled Neighborhood Register, was released in 2011, and his second book-length collection, Pardon My Heart, was published by TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press in 2018. Marcus lives with his wife and daughter in Columbus, Ohio, and teaches in the MFA programs at Ohio State and Queens University of Charlotte. 

Iain Haley Pollock
Iain Haley Pollock is the author of two poetry collections, Ghost, Like a Place (Alice James Books, 2018), which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and Spit Back a Boy (U. of Georgia Press, 2011), winner of the 2010 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Individual poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, The Baffler, and The New York Times Magazine. Pollock serves as Chair of the English Department at Rye Country Day School and is a member of the poetry faculty at the Solstice MFA program of Pine Manor College. He also curates the Kitchen Table Series, a bi-monthly online poetry reading. 

Interested but can’t afford the workshop? Contact us at info@bethanyarts.org