Occult: Poetry and Divination with Timothy Liu and Hoa Nguyen

This workshop will explore how occult practices—astrology, I-Ching, tarot—dovetail with our writing lives. We’ll first take a look at historical figures (Yeats, H.D., Robert Duncan, Sylvia Plath. James Merrill) before delving into prompts and revisionary exercises that border on the uncanny.

Timothy Liu is the author of ten books of poems, most recently Kingdom Come: A Fantasia. His work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Bomb, The Nation, Paris Review, Poetry, The Pushcart Prize and elsewhere. His journals and papers are archived in the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library. A reader of occult esoterica, Liu has given I-Ching and tarot readings from the jungles of Peru to the islands of Greece. He is Professor of English at William Paterson University in New Jersey and lives in Manhattan and Woodstock, NY.

Born in the Mekong Delta and raised in the Washington DC area, Hoa Nguyen currently makes her home in Toronto. Her recent poetry collections include As Long As Trees Last, Red Juice, Poems 1998-2008, and Violet Energy Ingots, a finalist for the Griffin Prize. Nguyen began her “legendary” poetry workshop nearly 20 years ago and is a tarot reader with a loyal international client list. You can read her in a conversation regarding the relationship between her tarot practice and her poetry practice here at Catapult.

Click here to register