California Poets in the Schools 47th Symposium in Santa Barbara 9/9-11, 2011

BREAKING NEWS: We have several "commuter" spaces available—attend the entire conference for only $200/150 for Sat only) and sleep off campus. All the single rooms are gone—but there's usually two beds per room. You could also risk it and show up—there will probably be space available somewhere. If not, then Motel 6 is your BFF. We are also negotiating for more rooms at Casa de Maria. Meanwhile, if you know a poet who is attending, you can always ask if you can share a room.

There are a few slots open for Steve Kowit's fabulous writing workshop on Friday afternoon as well. Call or email Tina ASAP to reserve a slot. info@cpits.org or 415-221-4201.
BREAKING:

Are you going to The Ballgame? Giants vs. Phillies? It's a very SPECIAL event for CPITS. The SF Giants will hand SF CPITS Area Coordinator Susie Terence and 12 Jr. Giants a big check for $10,000 to bring poetry workshops into the classrooms. Be there. Take pix, and post them on Facebook. Go Giants! Go Susie! Take me out to the ballgame...

DEADLINE TO REGISTER IS AUGUST 12. CONTACT CPITS ASAP IF YOU'D LIKE TO ATTEND

CPITS' 47th annual poetry workshop & symposium, "Writing Ourselves True," 9/9-11, 2011 @ Santa Barbara's La Casa de Maria retreat and conference center.

CPITS' annual poetry workshop & symposium is one of the most sublime and inexpensive writers' conferences in the nation. Poets, artists and teachers are welcome. Sign up for our action-packed weekend, "Writing Ourselves True," on 9/9-11, 2001 at the idyllic La Casa de Maria retreat, a former convent in Santa Barbara. Oh, and the food's divine too. 

Double click to enlarge

Visit http://www.cpits.org/events/ev​ents.htm or email Tina@CPITS.org to sign up.




Over 15 workshops offered at the CPITS' annual poetry workshop & symposium, "Writing Ourselves True," 9/9-11 @ Santa Barbara's La Casa de Maria: Friday workshop with Steve Kowit, featured reading by Perie Longo.

Perie Longo

TUESDAY’S CHILD
                                 for Zane 

…is full of grace, but much more, son
of my son, made of love and earth’s fruit,
high surf, long trails toward wide vision
this grandmother dare brag, snuggling him
first time in the holy air, he light as light,
delivered floating in his liquid orb.
His mother knew a blessing, yes,
from  the start. Nothing could stop
him slipping through heaven's cracks
bent on life, though angels tried to
hold him back. What could he want
from the world with all its strife despite
the splurge of nature, tender parents,
two sisters who would care for him,
coo to see him smile, share kisses,
blankets, books, the “real” rabbit,
their princess wings if he missed
where he came from. Long before dawn
I woke in a pool of moonlight on my pillow
and thought truly, a sign from above,
if only I could call down my husband
to shout the grand news. When sun rose
I opened the door for the paper and
there over the mountains a rare dusting
of snow as glistening crown.

Perie Longo, poet- teacher
Santa Barbara

Perie will be reading with Steve Kowit on September 9 at our symposium at Casa De Maria!

Sat/Sun workshops by Blake More, Shadab Zeest Hashmi, Joan Gelfand, Seretta Martin, Melinda Palacio, Karen Lewis, Phyllis Meshaulam, minerva, Claudia Poquoc, Gwynn O'Gara, Daryl Chin, Fernando Castro, Tobey Kaplan, Nan Busse, Jill Moses & Shelley Savren. Come for a day or the entire weekend!

CPITS 47TH SYMPOSIUM - Writing Ourselves True
Friday, September 9 - Sunday, September 11

La Casa de Maria Retreat Center, Santa Barbara

CPITS 47th Symposium will take place Friday, September 9th through Sunday, September 11th, 2011, at La Casa de Maria Retreat Center in Santa Barbara. Located in the Montecito foothills, La Casa de Maria is a local treasure, ranked by U.S. News and World Report 2006 as "one of the best U.S. retreats."

In addition to charming accommodations, the center provides miles of walking and hiking trails and a swimming pool. Save the date and check back for more details.

Schedule: Friday, September 9 (pre-symposium)

Writing Intensive with Steve Kowit. Includes a fabulous lunch at La Casa de
Maria at noon, followed by the writing intensive with Steve Kowit from 1 to 5pm.

Steve Kowit

Steve Kowit, our featured workshop intensive leader for our CPITS symposium 
will be at Casa De Maria on Friday, September 9.


  

Terri  Glass: When did you discover the love of poetry and who were some of your mentors?
 
Steve Kowit: I've been a writer since I was a kid. My first "novel," (illustrated in crayon) was about a slave rebellion. I was probably in the 4th or 5th grade. I had a schoolteacher in 10th grade, George Bailin, who was a serious poet, and so I started writing poetry because I liked him a lot and wanted him to like me. As soon as I started I was hooked. I've never stopped. Then I discovered Hart Crane and fell madly in love with his work. I didn't understand a word of it, but what sumptuous language, what marvelously ecstatic music and phrasing! I even gave a copy ofThe Bridge to a girl I had a crush on; that was also, probably, in the 10th grade. Then I wanted to write like the avant-garde, the Beats and Black Mountain people and New York School poets who were starting to make their reputations in the early 60s. The poets who published in Yugen. But one day I had an epiphany: Other than Ginsberg's work, I didn't really love their poetry. I was already in love with Dylan Thomas and Crane and Whitman, but because Whitman was a century in the past, and because of the vast range and power of his work, it was hard to use him as a model. And then I discovered Jeffers. Of course scores and scores of poets among my contemporaries have influenced me, people like Mary Oliver, Kim Addonizio, Dorianne Laux, Ron Koertge and Ted Kooser. Far too many to name.
 
Terri:  To what do your attribute the success of your handbook for writing poetry, In the Palm of Your Hand? Why is it the best selling book of its kind on Amazon?
 
Steve:  I wrote it relatively unselfconsciously, in my real voice, out of my real passions and after years of classroom experience teaching poetry to talented adults. But also, I think, I wanted to make sure that it was reader friendly at every level, that it didn't sound technical or esoteric or about some sort of specialized knowledge. And I knew that a lot of the model poems were wonderful models of contemporary poetry that might disabuse people of the notion that poems are always incomprehensible and off putting. 
 
Terri:  Do you have anything special lined for the workshop intensive for our poet teachers at Casa De Maria on September 9?
 
Steve: I want participants to write drafts of at least three new poems, hopefully four, to look at the craft behind a few marvelous model poems, to see what makes them work as moving human communications and acts of memorable linguistic music. I want participants to dig into their emotional memories, things they've always wanted to write about, but haven't yet managed to. Have participants use language acts (questions, exclamatory one-word sentences, broken-off sentences, etc.) and other formal elements that they don't commonly use, work with tone and voice, with assonance and off-rhyme in ways that might push them further in one or another direction. Ultimately, I'd love people to end up with four first (or second) drafts that are hot, that they are excited to keep working on, that they know are going to turn into real keepers. That's what I'd want in a workshop: to produce real work, even though the poems might still be at a rough first-draft stage. But I want it all to be fun; no matter how many tears people shed at the memories or material out of which they're working, the workshop has to be fun and relaxed and full of laughs and with lots of room for lots of points of view (since most or all participants are poet teachers, they all know as well as I do, that there's no "right" way to write a poem, no "correct" process!). Ultimately it should be exhilarating, make people want to get home and write poems! An essay of mine in the current Writer's Chronicle is called "A Poet's Anti-Rule Book" and takes a skeptical view of rules for poets. The trick is to improve on the blank page... which isn't easy to do!
 

Terri: I look forward to seeing some hot drafts and breaking the rules with you Steve. Sounds like tons of fun!

The Blue Dress (YouTube link) When I grab big Eddie, the gopher drops from his teeth & bolts for the closet, vanishing into a clutter of shoes & valises & vacuum attachments, & endless boxes of miscellaneous rubbish. Grumbling & cursing, carton by carton, I lug everything out: that mountain of hopeless detritus ― until, with no place to hide, he breaks for the other side of the room & I have him at last, trapped in a corner, tiny & trembling. I lower the plastic freezer bowl over his head & Boom! ― slam the thing down. "Got him!" I yell out, slipping a folder under the edge for a lid. But when I open the front door, it's teeming, a rain so fierce it drives me back into the house, & before I can wriggle into my sneakers, Mary, impatient, has grabbed the contraption out of my hands & run off into the yard with it, barefoot. She's wearing that blue house dress. I know just where she's headed: that big mossy boulder down by the oleanders across from the shed, & I know what she'll do when she gets there ― hunker down, slip off the folder, let the thing slide to the ground while she speaks to him softly, whispers encouraging, comforting things. Only after the gopher takes a few tentative steps, dazed, not comprehending how he got back to his own world, then tries to run off, will she know how he's fared: if he's wounded, or stunned, or okay ― depraved ravisher of our gladiolus & roses, but neighbor & kin nonetheless. Big Eddie meows at my feet while I stand by the window over the sink, watching her run back thru the rain, full of good news. Triumphant. Laughing. Wind lashing the trees. It’s hard to fathom how gorgeous she looks, running like that through the storm: that blue   sheath of a dress aglow in the smoky haze― that luminous blue dress pasted by rain to her hips. I stand at the window grinning, amazed at my own undeserved luck― at a life that I still, when I think of it, hardly believe. Steve Kowit, San Diego

Friday–Sunday, September 9-11

Check in time at La Casa de Maria begins at 4 pm on Friday. The symposium begins with a 6pm dinner on Friday, followed by an 8pm reading by our writing intensive teacher and feautured reader Steve Kowit and our honoree Perie Longo.

Saturday begins at 8am with breakfast, and workshops will run all day from 9am to 5pm. A general meeting will be held after lunch on Saturday from 1 to 2pm. Saturday evening will include an open poet reading and celebration at 7:30pm.

Sunday workshops will begin at 9:30am and the symposium will end by noon. There will be time throughout the weekend for swimming and relaxation.

Meal Request: If you have any special dietary needs or meal requests, or if you are vegetarian or vegan please inform the CPITS office so they can order meals appropriately from La Casa de Maria.

Download Conference Materials: http://www.cpits.org/event​s/events.htm

mail registration to:
California Poets in the Schools
1333 Balboa Street Ste. 3
San Francisco, CA 94118
415-221-4201
California Poets in the Schools

Follow CPITS on Twitter @Calpoets

Or visit/Like us on Facebook.

La Casa de Maria 800 El Bosque Road Santa Barbara, CA 93108 tel: (805) 969-5031 fax: (805) 969-2759


CPITS 2010 pix at IONS Institute, North Marin


CPITS 2009 pix at La Casa de Maria in Santa Barbara


CPITS 2008 pix at Walker Creek, West Marin


CPITS 2007 pix at Warner Hot Springs Ranch in San Diego