What you should know

Register:

E-mail: Becky Stephens @ bstephens@urbangracetacoma.org with your name, phone number, and e-mail as well as the same information for any other people you are registering.

When:

Thursday, July 24, from 5 p.m. – 8 p.m.

Where:

Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Avenue, in downtown Tacoma (www.tacomaartmuseum.org)

What to Bring:

Yourself and your imagination (writing materials will be provided, as only pencils are allowed in the gallery space)

Cost:

The workshop itself is free of charge; the only cost is admission to the museum, which will be discounted 10% for workshop members.

What to expect:

Focusing on the theme of “Illumination,” the workshop will take as its subject the Tacoma Art Museum’s visiting exhibit of the Saint John’s Bible (www.saintjohnsbible.org).  Commissioned by Saint John’s Abbey and Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, The Saint John’s Bible is a contemporary work created in the tradition of handwritten medieval manuscripts. The first handwritten Bible commissioned in more than 500 years, this illuminated manuscript includes, among other features, a genealogy of Biblical women, illustrations of DNA, and connections with Islamic, Jewish, and Native American spiritual traditions.  The workshop welcomes participants of all spiritual orientations.

Specifically, the workshop will consist of an “ekphrastic” exercise, in which participants view the Saint John’s Bible exhibit and respond to it through their poetry.  A discussion and revision session will follow.  At 6 p.m., Father Eric Hollas, Director of the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library and a member of Saint John's Abbey, will give a talk on the Saint John’s Bible.  The evening will conclude with a reading by the poetry workshop participants, who are invited—on a volunteer basis—to read the work they have produced that evening or other poetry they deem appropriate for the event’s theme.

Your Facilitator

William Kupinse is the Urban Grace Poet Laureate of Tacoma for 2008-09 and Associate Professor of English at the University of Puget Sound, where he teaches modern British literature, literature and the environment, and creative writing.  Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Cimarron Review, The Fourth River, and Sea Stories; he is also the author of numerous articles in scholarly journals and anthologies, as well as a poetry chapbook, Raw Materials.

The second Urban Grace poetry workshop, focusing on the theme of “Sustainability,” will be held in March 2009