Writers Studio is pleased to present an evening of workshops and readings on the ACC campus with two esteemed Colorado writers, Poet Jared Smith and Poet/Playwright/Writer Rita Brady Kiefer.

Thursday Night Workshop and Reading with Poet Jared Smith and Poet/Playwright/Writer Rita Brady Kiefer

October 29th starting at 5:30 p.m. Half Moon, Main ACC Building.
Advanced Reservations Required!

Workshops begin at 5:30 p.m. -- Readings begin at 7:30 p.m.

Workshop Descriptions:

EXPLODING THE I/EYE THROUGH LANGUAGE Rita Brady Kiefer

Together we will PLAY with language - tapping into one of many voices inside us - to discover what we are trying to say. As "first among equals" I will stir the waters by suggesting ways to engage with words.

POETRY AND THE LANGUAGE OF IMAGES Jared Smith

Poetry is largely the language of pictures and images. We'll practice writing and critiquing poems to find out what makes certain pictures more memorable or better able to communicate the feeling we want to our readers. Particular attention will be paid to including the "unexpected images" in our poems-the images that make our readers "be there" with us and feel what we feel. We'll also discuss what makes the images of some of our most famous poets so memorable, and how we might adapt their techniques.

About the Authors

Rita Brady Kiefer, Poet/playwright/creative non-fiction writer, currently directs the Gateway Poetry Program for survivors of domestic violence. Kiefer, Professor Emerita of English and Women's Studies, says "It took me half my career to discover there is no such thing as teaching." That realization has shaped her style of facilitating workshops, especially in safehouses where the residents have served as her mentors for over twenty years.

Kiefer's published poetry collections include Nesting Doll (University Press of Colorado), Unveiling (Chicory Blue Press) and Trying on Faces (Monkshood Press). Her work has been solicited by and published in numerous anthologies including Face to Face (Farrar Straus & Giroux/North Point Press). Her poetry has appeared in such journals as Ploughshares, The Connecticut Poetry Review, The Yalobusha Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Bloomsbury Review, Many Mountains Moving, The High Plains Literary Review, Cimarron Review, Southern Poetry Review, Southwest Review, etc.

Her work has received several regional and national awards and she has been recognized internationally, receiving invitations to lecture and deliver poetry readings in Spain and Argentina. Since retiring Kiefer has completed a full-length play and a creative non-fiction manuscript. The play, "My Name Is Not Eve," based on the stories of four battered women, has been performed in Denver at the Acoma Center Theatre and in Grand Junction at Mesa State College Experimental Theatre. Beyond Unveiling, her non-fiction manuscript, combines the work of survivors with her memoir.

About her Poetry: In this important volume of poetry, Rita Kiefer invites us to see the Western world anew through the eyes of "Sister Mailee, a female Jesuit" (15). It's a world invigorated and enriched by the female genius that inhabits it, a genius that speaks from the past and in the present, in spite of the patriarchyand, even, because of it. What we see is a powerfully cohesive collection of personal-confessional poems that explore the psyche of a speaker torn, yet molded, by her past. But the collection is much more than that. It is also an invitation outward to galleries and ecclesiastical histories, one that will result in epiphanies for us as we discover the voices of women too important to be further silenced. Unveiling is Rita Kiefer's Cantos, her Portrait of the Artist, a contemporary literary achievement of great importance.
--Robert M. Hogge

Jared Smith is the author of seven critically-acclaimed volumes of poetry, as well as numerous essays, reviews, and pieces of literary commentary in U.S. and international literary journals. His Selected Longer Poems (1983-2009) is forthcoming from Tamarack Editions next spring, and his ninth volume of poetry, Grassroots, is forthcoming from Wind Publications. His other volumes include: The Graves Grow Bigger Between Generations (from Higganum Hill Books and nominated for a Colorado Book Award in 2009;) Where Images Become Imbued With Time (from Puddin'head Books in 2008;) Lake Michigan and Other Poems (Puddin'head Books, 2007;) Walking the Perimeters of the Plate Glass Window Factory (from Birch Brook Press, 2001;) Keeping the Outlaw Alive (Erie Street Press, 1988;) Dark Wing (Charred Norton Publishing, 1984;) and Song of the Blood (The Smith Press, 1983.)

Jared is a member of The New York Quarterly Advisory Board, as well as a past Board Member for that magazine; past Contributing Editor to Home Planet News; two-time Guest Editor of The Pedestal Magazine; and former President of Poets & Patrons. Jared's work has been adapted to stage in New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and in the suburbs of Chicago, and he has appeared several times on NPR and Pacifica radio networks.

He's often been compared to Whitman, but here, where he pays his respects at our collective graves, he puts me more in mind of Blake--not the young one of the Songs, but the darker Blake of the visionary prophecies. I would call this a sad book, but that would not account for how joyous it feels to be reminded that every inch of earth we walk is a sacred bone-heap, and this is now true of our highways and dams and bridges. His elegy grows stronger, more urgent...I'd call him a prophet of doom if it were not for the love that simply aches in every line.
--Diana Hume George

Reservations and Fees:

Workshop and Reading: $15 Donation to the ACC Foundation in Support of the Writers Studio Scholarship Fund.

$5 Donation asked from ACC registered students for Workshop and Reading.
Reservations and payment will be accepted until October 26. No refunds after October 26.

$5 suggested donation for Reading only--no reservations required to attend the reading.

To Make Reservations, please email writerstudio@arapahoe.edu by October 26. Be sure to include the Workshop you wish to attend.

Additional Writers Studio Links

Writers Studio Home | Events Calendar | Writing Credentials | Literary Contest | English Home