If you wish to hire me for a presentation or workshop or want to discuss cost or variation of any of the programs described below, please contact me via e-mail, telephone, or snail mail.
Pamela Moore Dionne
P. O. Box 1820
Port Townsend, WA 98368
360-385-3363
pmd@literarysalt.com
THREE EXPERIENCES IN CREATIVITY
- The Poem as Exploration
Instructor: Pamela Moore Dionne
Student limit: 5 to 15
Poems of place can be filled with an exploration of science, history, myth and personal experience. Using Fort Worden as place, incorporating found objects such as animal bones and skulls, shells, rocks, and feathers, students will recreate their internal vision into poetry. We will learn close observation and how to incorporate the finite into larger concepts. We'll examine poetic structures through contemporary poets with diverse cultural voices. Participants will develop an understanding of form and meter. Performance and editing skills will be honed with daily practice. We will develop breathing and projection techniques for the voice that enhance the power of a poetic reading.
- Improvisational Collaboration
Instructors: Pamela Moore Dionne and a musician who will be selected from a group of frequent collaborators based on availability at the time of the course offering.
Student limit: 5 to 15This is an introduction to improvisation and collaboration for musicians and writers. We will examine the organization of sound from the standpoint of music as language and spoken word as music. Rhythm and meter will be our focus. Students supply their own instruments, poetry, and prose from which we will work. Instruction will utilize actual practice, video, CD, cassette and the work of well-known poets and writers to demonstrate these various disciplines. Musicians and writers will work separately during the initial stages of development, but will come together to create the collaborative process which will result in an end-of-program performance.
- Crossing Artistic Borders
Instructors: Poet Pamela Moore Dionne and a musician who will be selected from a group of frequent collaborators based on availability at the time of the course offering.
Student limit: 5 to 15
Participants in this workshop will learn how to utilize multiple art forms to express themselves. They will develop an understanding of the various disciplines and techniques presented and learn how to incorporate each into performance.
OTHER WORKSHOPS AND SEMINARS AVAILABLE
Magical Realism in Prose and Poetry
Instructor: Pamela Moore Dionne
Student limit: 5 to 15
Learn a basic history and theory of Magical Realism. Learn to recognize the techniques of this form so that you are able to utilize them in your own poetry and prose. Participants are given examples written by current practitioners of the form. We read and discuss these before tackling assignments. The program is designed to work up from the basics to more sophisticated techniques. For instance, we start with assignments based on the magical rule of three: 3 characters, 3 events, 3 tasks, 3 outcomes — all culminating in a final denouement. We then aim toward more subtle renderings of magical realism such as magical archetypes.
Magic realism is fiction (or art, or poetry, or creative nonfiction) that combines real world events with supernatural events. By supernatural I mean extra-natural – those things that are outside of our normal experience of the world. These may take the form of ghosts who inhabit the same landscape as the "real" characters. Isabelle Allende walked ghosts throughout her story The House of the Spirits and Toni Morrison did the same thing in Beloved. Sometimes a story will have magic spells that alter the reality within the "real" characters lives as in Sandra Benitez' A Place Where the Sea Remembers or Laura Esquivel's Like Water For Chocolate. Much of magic realism has mythic overtones as in Arthur Clarke's 2001: a Space Odyssey or Ursula Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven. George Lucas' "Star Wars" owes much of its success to the magic realism of a possible science set in a mythical story. The magic comes not only from the science, but the mythical/mystical combination of man and spirit and science in combination.
Poetry Day Trips in the Olympic Mountains and around the Olympic Peninsula
Instructor: Pamela Moore Dionne
Student limit: 5 to 10
Come hike with award winning poet and prose writer Pamela Moore Dionne. This is a writing workshop that explores the geology, flora, and fauna of place. In this program, the Pacific Northwest lends itself to the nature poem in a hands-on literary exploration of a poet's home ground. Learn to recognize the region's trees, flowers, birds, and geological formations. Learn how to put these things into your poetry in meaningful ways. Participants must have or rent and be able to carry their own equipment. Each hike is geared to an individual group's general abilities. Participants must provide their own food and water for the hike.
We will journal and workshop throughout the day. Each hike begins with a discussion of potentials for the day and suggested writing approaches taken from a number of different sources. These are provided only as leaping off places for the individual writer.
Poetry and prose workshops can be designed or altered to fit most conference needs. Please contact me with your requirements.Pamela Moore Dionne
P. O. Box 1820
Port Townsend, WA 98368
360-385-3363
pmd@literarysalt.com
