Collage Poems

 “Your thoughts don’t have words every day,” Emily Dickinson wrote. “I don’t get writer’s block,” William Stafford wrote, “I just lower my standards.” It isn’t always possible to write a poem, especially in times of stress. One can, however, keep up a free writing or journaling practice. In this generative workshop, we will learn to mine our own journals for lines, images, and ideas that can be selected, edited, and juxtaposed to create poetry, not necessarily logical. We will use the techniques of found poetry in order to discover and/or create poems hidden in our own writing. We will first go over the basics of a free writing practice; then some techniques of found poetry; then various editing techniques. Even on days when you think you can’t write, you may be surprised by what you find. If you keep a journal, please bring it with you; if not, we can work with free writing done during our retreat.

Barbara Ungar is the author six books, most recently, After Naming the Animals, from The Word Works, which also published Immortal Medusa and Charlotte Brontë, You Ruined My Life. Prior books include Save Our Ship, which won the Snyder Prize from Ashland Poetry Press, and The Origin of the Milky Way, which won the Gival Poetry Prize. She has published in Rattle, Scientific American, Salmagundi, Pedestal, Southern Indiana Review, and many other journals. Her poems have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Bulgarian, and have been nominated multiple times for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. She is a professor emerita from The College of Saint Rose, where she taught writing for 29 years.   www.barbaraungar.net