Practicing Sands: Play & Process with Farnoosh Fathi

We play at Paste—
Till qualified, for Pearl—
Then, drop the Paste—
And deem ourself a fool—

The Shapes—though—were similar—
And our new Hands
Learned Gem-Tactics—
Practicing Sands—

Our most beloved, accomplished poets, like Dickinson, understand that play is paramount in writing. In this workshop, we’ll invigorate our writing through disciplined play. Constraints and chance operations such as Tzara’s Hat and Burroughs’s cut-ups will multiply our means of invention. Lynda Barry’s What it Is will anchor our process in meditative play, engaging memory and imagery especially, and help us bound over our usual antagonists—difficult passages, blank pages and the inner critical voice. Altogether, we’ll freshen our instincts and write with nerve and humility, free from the baggage of “serious” writing.

Farnoosh Fathi is the author of Great Guns (2013). She’s the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Poetry Foundation, the Fulbright Program, and the MacDowell Colony, and her poems, translations, and prose have appeared in Boston Review, Fence, Everyday Genius, Poetry, Jacket2, and elsewhere.

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