5 Day Workshop JULY 13-18, 2025 at Pyramid Life Center (PLC) Women Writers Retreat: Exploring Musicality, Poetic Tradition, and Ourselves via the Duplex
Jericho Brown invented the duplex poetic form as a means to challenge some of the existing rules of poetry. At its essence, the duplex structure invites us to include inventive, fluid, musical, and deeply grounded elements in our poetry. The form contains aspects of modern poetry and of many traditional forms—both in their structures and themes. Brown speaks of the duplex as a combination of the sonnet—with its 14 lines, the volta near the end, and a relatively consistent meter; the inline rhyme and repetition of the ghazal; the musicality of the pantoum; and the emotion and repetition included in American blues.
Although we will use the duplex as the backbone for this week, people are free to write in free form or other form. The class is an opportunity for investigation and connection with our poet ancestors and with modern poets, including ourselves. Additionally, we will be writing in an environment rich with untainted water, open sky above, mountains in the background, creatures high and low (generally not scary critters), and a wealth of flora. We can bring into our duplex poems whatever we discover at Pyramid Life Center, as well as what we carry within that wants to be explored and seen. This poetic form provides a loose container for us to sing and play and explore—language, emotion, history, and awe.
For more information about PLC and the Women Writers Retreat, please follow this link: https://www.pyramidlife.org/
CRAFT COURSES AND WORKSHOPS:
Each course offered includes a series of 4 classes, with a limited number of participants. We explore one craft element during the series in order to delve deeply into that element, with each week’s class adding to the foundation for the next week’s study.
Currently classes meet on zoom for 2.5 hours for four sessions. I keep these groups small, 6-7 students, so that I and the group as a whole can offer close attention to each person’s work. As the course progresses, we gain a more extensive understanding and development of the craft than a single craft talk or workshop allows for.
Each class includes generative writing, teaching with group discussion of a specific quality of the craft, and examination of different published poets’ work as they relate to that quality. We will have the opportunity to offer and receive supportive and constructive feedback to each other. Because I have us focus on specific aspects of the craft while we give comments, we come to identify more easily distinct strengths and areas to work on in our own poetry.
Between classes you will be asked to do a small amount of reading and to work on a poem, or poems, based on class discussion. This gives us a chance to apply what we’ve learned as we write and revise. Then we can share specific, constructive feedback, including questions and suggestions (whereas, with generative writing, we focus on pointing out only what works well.
Approximate time invested between classes can be 2-5 hours, depending on how much you want to write, experiment, and revise.
Course 1: The Power of the Line (May 2023, July 2023) – COMPLETED
– Keep on the lookout for the next round!
In this course we will investigate the characteristics of a strong poetic line. In poetry, each line, as “an entity unto itself,” can embody the essence of the poem as a whole. By closely examining selected poems, as well as our own work, we come to a deeper understanding of how line breaks, word choices, and variations of syntax enhance the texture, musicality, meaning, and tone of a poetic line.
Course 2: Metaphor – More than a Figure of Speech (September 2023, December 2023) – COMPLETED – Keep on the lookout for the next round!
During this four-session course, we discover the marvels of metaphor. We’ll review definitions and types of figurative language and investigate their use in published poems. Anyone who thinks they can’t write metaphors will prove themselves wrong! As we create and further develop meaningful and effective metaphors, we will use that generative writing as a springboard for writing and revising poems.
RETREATS:
Planning in progress for daylong and non-residential weekend writer retreats!
sarahbsullivan 