Could brevity be of use to you in the new and improved year? It’s an honor to be leading a virtual workshop at Woodland Pattern starting January 10th.
Shorthand
January 10, 17, and 24
Virtual Workshop coordinated by Woodland Pattern Bookcenter
A few compact lines can have the breadth of a novel. Though often decried as the end of literature, today’s trends toward terse messaging, burgeoning palettes of emojis, shrinking attention spans fueled by distracting handheld computers can all be productive points of reference for understanding and capturing the essence of time and place.
During the workshop we will survey inspiring and infamous examples of spare, highly-concentrated writing that achieve maximum effect with minimum material. For example, Jenny Holzer’s prescient aphorism, “Abuse of power comes as no surprise,” has a nuanced tone that both confronts and commiserates with the reader. We will look to Ms. Holzer, Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, Mary Oliver, Ron Padgett, Aram Saroyan, Audre Lorde, and Morgan Parker as we mine contemporary media landscapes and/or our phones for inspiration. Through sketches, experiments in brevity, and tweet-length searching, we will explore what can be left out as we create micro-masterpieces for the times.