Prayer, Despair and Ecstasy with Ariana Reines

6 Thursdays, March 8–April 12, 6:00-8:30PM

In this workshop, students will explore both secular and sacred work informed by states of consciousness and rigors of form. Readings from Celan, Césaire, Cohen, Conrad, Donne, Plath, Rankine, Rimbaud and others, plus hymns, sutras, curses, and magic spells from Ancient Greece, contemporary Salem, Haiti, and Appalachia will inform the creative process. Our goal is to write poems with the torque and power of real magical acts.

Ariana Reines is the author of Mercury, Coeur de Lion and The Cow, which won Fence’s Alberta Prize in 2006 and the Obie-winning play TELEPHONE. She was the Holloway lecturer in Poetry at UC Berkeley in 2009 and has taught and performed at many venues in the U.S. and Europe.