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Adult Workshop with Patricia Smith

Adult Workshop with Patricia Smith

** Only Virtual attendance now **

All The Extraordinary Ways Not To Be Ordinary

With: Patricia Smith

Date: Saturday, November 12

Time: 11:00 am - 12:30 pm

Location: Attend in-person at MERGE, 136 South Dubuque Street, on downtown Ped Mall. Attend virtually via Zoom.

Ages: 19+

Tuition: $25 or fest pass

Registration Required

** Only virtual attendance available now. In person attendance is full. **

Please sign up using the form below.

Workshop Description

As you jog feverishly to your notebook or keyboard with that one-in-a-million idea, you try to forget that a million other people are lit up by that same idea, driven by the same fever and subject to your same delusion—that no one is going to write whatever-it-is quite the way you will.

But you make that happen. In this workshop, we’ll look at the best ways to establish that all-important creative signature—the unexpected entry, the zooming lens, distraction in form, distraction in approach, abandoning the body and foraging for beauty. When we’re done, whether or not your work stands out in the pack will be entirely up to you.

BONUS: How to win a slam, from someone who's never been in a final that she's lost.


REGISTER NOW for online attendance only

  • If you've purchased a fest pass, use your code on the form below to register for free! 
  • If you have not purchased a fest pass, you can register and pay for this event only using the form below.
  • If you'd like to purchase a fest pass (and access all Mic Check Poetry Fest events for one low price), you can get yours here.

Patricia Smith

Patricia Smith is the award-winning author of eight critically-acclaimed books of poetry. Writing about Incendiary Art, Publisher’s Weekly praised Smith’s “razor-sharp linguistic sensibilities that give her scenes a cinematic flair and her lines a momentum that buoys their emotional weight.” A master of poetic forms from her Motown crown of sonnets to elegant ghazals, Smith’s poetry fearlessly engages with America’s continuous war on black bodies.

Smith is a Guggenheim fellow, a Civitellian, a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, a finalist for the Neustadt Prize, a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize, a former fellow at both Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, the most successful poet in the competition’s history. Read Patricia Smith’s full bio here.

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