Thursday, September 06, 2007

The Weekend Sessions

The following message is from our good friend Marian Haddad, forwarded by P.C. McKinnon:

Please see www.salonmijangos.com for more information on all classes offered in creative writing, visual art, and music.


THE WEEKEND SESSIONS - Instructor: Marian Haddad, MFA
Location: SALON MIJANGOS - 1906 S. Flores, San Antonio, Texas

8 students minimum
18 students maximum


Weekend One:

October 20 & 21, 2007 = $110.00 for full weekend
2:00-5:00 each day

Strengthening our Poems and Prose: This class is geared to those who love to write either poetry or prose (personal essays, memoirs, and/or short stories) but who have not yet published. We will focus on what fortifies a creative piece and will go over what makes a poem or story strong. Haddad will ask some participants to come prepared to share a typed original piece and make enough copies to share with the class to go over in a workshop-style atmosphere. Those participants who do not choose to share their work in this fashion can still glean much from the observation and participation of a classmate's poem or story being "workshopped". There will be time for new writing. The goal is for the participants to leave the weekend sessions with a heightened idea of "what makes a poem or prose piece fly, work, live."


Weekends Two, Three, and Four:

November 3 & 4 = $175.00 for six classes
November 10 & 11
November 17 & 18
2:00-5:00 each day



Poetry: Refining an Already-Strong Poem and Taking it to the Limit: This class is geared to those who have not yet published collections but who have published poetry in literary journals and anthologies, and/or who have worked privately with published poets and writers as mentors, and/or who have taken courses in creative writing. The sessions will focus on the pacing of a poem (and will include discussion on the importance of various line-lengths and how those line-lengths influence the pacing of the piece), the tonality, line-breaking, enjambent, and refinement. The importance of revision is highly addressed. "Listening to the poem" is central and will be discussed. Discussion, if requested by participants, will included advice on publishing in journals and anthologies.



Weekend Five:

Dec. 1 & 2 - $110.00 for full weekend
2:00-5:00 each day

Poetry: Compiling your Manuscript: This class is geared to those who have published significantly in literary journals and/or anthologies and will discuss revision and refinement to a degree, but will more so discuss the compilation of a poetry manuscript. This class is open to those who are ready to explore envisioning their own collection of poetry. We will address: Where to begin? Where to end? Which poem will your book start with? Which poem will your book end with? Should your book be divided into sections? Should you use epigraphs on section pages? At the beginning? Are all of the poems you've written and published going to appear in the same book: do they work together? Which publishers should you send to? How do presses differ: small presses, university presses, large presses? Why send to contests? How do you send to contests? Why? Why not? etc. This class is geared to the highest refinement of the poem, and will focus on how to thread poems together and form the final manuscript that will seek its place in the world as you prepare to send it out to various presses.


Creative Writing for Seniors - (10 class days on Tuesday afternoons)Teacher: Marian Haddad. Meeting time: Tuesdays, from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pmSemester: October 2 to December 11 (10 weeks)

Do you have stories you can never forget? Things that happened when you were a teen? Or things that happened just yesterday? Do you want to tell the world about that time... those times with your partner, your children, your self... do you have something you want to write down and keep for posterity's sake? For the sake of your own documentation and keeping the stories alive? For possible publication? This class is geared to helping you get those stories out in prose form and/or poetry form.

We will explore the use of dialogue in creative writing. We will discuss the necessity of precise and detailed language, the importance of universal truths, the importance of sound and attention to detail. We will take our observations of the world and our lives within them and our observation of others and tell the stories that are waiting to be born. We will workshop our original pieces. Participants will bring typed copies of at least one original work (prose or poetry), and will bring enough copies for the entire class. The participant will read their poems or stories aloud as the rest of the class reads along on a copy made for them and comments on the piece. This will be a guided workshop, and the final comments will come from the instructor. These classes will strengthen your sense of an immediate writing community and will strengthen your writing itself. Marian Haddad has taught creative writing workshops for OASIS for senior citizens and is offering this class because of her absolute joy in working with this community, hearing the stories that define their lives, and helping them get their ideas out onto paper so the stories can have a larger audience.

Marian HaddadMarian's Classes: Creative Writing for Seniors.

Marian Haddad, MFA (poet and writer), is the author of Saturn Falling Down (April 2003), a chapbook of poems compiled at the request of Texas Public Radio in correlation with their Hands-On Poetry Workshops, and a full-length poetry collection, Somewhere between Mexico and a River Called Home (Pecan Grove Press 2004), which appeared on the El Paso Times' Top Five Book List (October 2004), and is recommended reading by The Valparaiso Review and Small Press Review. Haddad received her B.A. in Creative Writing at The University of Texas at El Paso and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from San Diego State University. She studied "The Prose Poem" at the graduate level at Emerson College and was the recipient of an endowment from The National Endowment for the Humanities to do graduate work at The University of Notre Dame. Her poems have appeared in a number of literary journals and anthologies. Her work has been profiled on The Hallmark Channel and various media venues. And her works-in-progress include two collections of poetry and one collection of personal essays/memoirs. She has taught Creative Writing at Our Lady of the Lake University and Northwest Vista College and International Literature at St. Mary's University. Manuscripts on which she has consulted have won various literary prizes, including The Ashland Poetry Prize and The Texas Review Poetry Prize among others. She currently resides in San Antonio where she works as a manuscript consultant, visiting writer, creative writing workshop instructor, public speaker, and private writing and publishing mentor. See Marian Haddad, MFA at www.marianhaddad.com