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Experiments in Creativity

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

If you allow them to, ideas for art and writing can come from absolutely anywhere. This creative generation class will put that theory to the test, through a series of experiments in creative problem-solving, spontaneous and chance-based play, and other exploratory prompts that challenge you to work outside your normal modes and investigate how the creative brain works. Prior to the start of this series of classes, each participant will receive a unique packet of random materials in the mail. In-class exercises and weekly assignments will ask you to work with these materials in various ways, including an opportunity to create collaboratively at a distance. You’ll also keep a weekly journal detailing your personal process and ideas about creativity. As support for this process, we…

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$300

Pushpins & Portals: Experimenting with Short Forms

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Pushpins & Portals: Experimenting with Short Forms This workshop is virtual, PST Register here Pushpins & Portals: Experimenting with Short Forms In this 6-week class, we will experiment with short form creative writing. Our focus—whether it’s flash fiction, lyric essay, prose poetry, or hybrid—will be on the art of compression. Each week, participants will be given a writing exercise, a short reading, and two workshop submissions from their peers. Class time will include workshop as well as discussion of readings and craft. Our workshop will be guided by observations, questions, and possibilities. We will be thinking less about how to “fix” a piece of writing and more about what we see, our curiosities, and how to recognize hidden opportunities. Each participant will receive feedback from…

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$80 – $200

Grief, Lyrically

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Writers often use musical techniques to access states of consciousness we associate with grief. Lyrical writing prioritizes music, rhythm, and emotion over the narrative arc. The goal of this course is to find entry into writing through reading, conversation,and various prompts and exercises to catalyze memory and thinking. We will consider how writers crafting stories and poetry about grief use lyricism, discursiveness, fragmentation, and silence to embody writing content through form. Participants should be prepared to write a lot! Prompts and exercises will allow students to access various parts of memory. In a short period of time, we will get to know one another and provide a sounding board for our stories in a safe space. Access Program We want our classes to be accessible…

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$155

Gabrielle Bates in Conversation With Luther Hughes

Powell's City of Books 1005 W Burnside Street, Portland, OR, United States

Gabrielle Bates’s electric debut collection, Judas Goat (Tin House), plumbs the depths of intimate relationships. The book’s eponymous animal is used to lead sheep to slaughter, while its own life is spared, and its harrowing existence echoes through this spellbinding collection of forty poems, which wrestle with betrayal and forced obedience, violence and young womanhood, and the “forbidden felt language” of sexual and sacred love. Bates’s poems conjure encounters with figures from scriptures, domesticated animals eyeing the wild, and mothering as a shape-shifting, spectral force; they question what it means to love another person and how to exorcise childhood fears. All the while, the Deep South haunts, and no matter how far away the speaker moves, the South always draws her back home. In confession,…

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Free

POETRY READING BY DYLAN ANGELL & DAN RAPHAEL

Passages Bookshop 1801 NW Upshur, Suite 660, Portland, OR, United States

Spare Room Reading Series & Passages Bookshop present a poetry reading and book launch for Dylan Angell (Demanding the Room) and Dan Raphael (In the Wordshed). Door opens at 6:00 pm; reading at 6:30 pm (no late entry). Admission free — Mask & vax required Dylan Angell is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. He has released a number of chapbooks including Anywhere I Lay My Head, released by The Silent Academy, and Photo Never Taken, released by The Concern Newsstand. He co-organizes Evenings, a mixed media series, with Loan Tran and Victoria Bouloubasis. His new collection Demanding the Room, with artwork by Mark He, is published by Bored Wolves. He plays the trumpet and likes to swim in natural bodies of water.…

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Free

The Break with Kaveh Akbar

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In partnership with Alano Club of Portland, “The Break is a monthly virtual gathering of writers and artists lead by Kaveh Akbar, celebrating amongness, collaboration, and interdisciplinary creative experimentation. Though many of the activities and discussions orbit or are inflected by recovery themes (Akbar has been in active recovery for eight years), participants are not required to self-identify as being in recovery to participate.” Register at: https://www.portlandalano.org/the-break Kaveh Akbar Kaveh Akbar is an Iranian-American poet and scholar, and the author of Pilgrim Bell, published by Graywolf Press; Calling a Wolf a Wolf, published by Alice James Books in the US and Penguin Books in the UK; and the chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic, published by Sibling Rivalry Press. In 2014, he founded the poetry interview…

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Free

Delve Readers Seminar: Language as resistance, words as collage: Don Mee Choi and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Though published many decades apart, these two texts share similarities both in their subject matter and their experimental qualities. Just as Dictee cannot be merely labeled as a memoir and DMZ Colony cannot be labeled purely as a poetry collection, both texts expand our understanding of genre by weaving together prose, poetry and photographs. Moreover, they “hold history accountable” by integrating historical events into the deeply personal, ranging from Japanese colonization of Korea to the Korean War. In doing so, these Korean American writers give voice to feelings and understandings that have often been silenced. By looking at these two texts in tandem, we will examine their use of language to resist power and silencing as well as how their experimental methods seek to give…

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$160

Slamlandia

Literary Arts 925 SW Washington Street, Portland, OR, United States

Slamlandia is a poetry open mic and slam that meets every month. This mic provides a creative, fun, and welcoming space for all literary communities in Portland. We encourage poets new and old to come share their work. We strive towards a safer space for poets to read their own poetry, witness others, and participate in community. This event takes place in-person. Proof of Covid-19 vaccine or a negative PCR test is required for admittance. Please see our Covid-19 guidelines for in-person events at Literary Arts. Hosted by Julia Gaskill. Julia Gaskill Julia Gaskill is a professional daydreamer hailing from Portland, Oregon. Her poetry examines the tightrope we sometimes walk of feeling our voices censored and also being unabashedly ourselves. Her poems touch on everyday…

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Free

Filament Reading Series

The Corporeal Writing Center 510 SW 3rd Ave #101, Portland, OR, United States

Filament is BACK! Filament is an all-genre Creative Writing Reading series from Portland State’s MFA Program. Join us on February 17 from 7 - 8:30 PM at Corporeal Writing to hear five talented writers from the Creative Writing program read their work! Free to attend. Masks and Vaccine Cards Required. Featuring: Joshua Stanek, Natalie Flaherty, Nora Broker, Jay Butler, and Alex Roselio De La Cruz

Free

OMSI After Dark: Books & Brews

Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) 1945 SE Water Avenue, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for OMSI After Dark: Books & Brews! Find your next favorite book, learn how to get self published and sample local brews. The ultimate night out! Typically the last Wednesday of the month, OMSI After Dark is a 21+ event that gathers local vendors, artisans, and science content for you to enjoy. Get ready to taste test a local brew, catch a show, or try a science demo – all while exploring the museum’s permanent exhibit halls. CURRENT COVID RULES Masks are optional for guests although we still highly encourage you to wear a mask and recommend you wear an N95 or KN95. We are limiting capacity to 1,200 guests. 21+ Only | A valid government issued ID is required for entry for…

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$25 – $40
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