Registration Open! Classes fill up fast!
The Norbert Blei Writing Workshop
July 24 – 30, 2016
Albert DeGenova, instructor
“Writing in Rhythm”
Overview of Creative Writing
Writer Independent Study
at The Clearing Folk School,
Ellison Bay (Door County), Wisc.
These classes are taught in the tradition of renowned writer and teacher Norbert Blei (1935-2013), who passed the torch of his 40+ year writing class at The Clearing to Albert DeGenova and Susan O’Leary (Susan will be teaching “The Writer’s Craft,” May 8-14, 2016 also at The Clearing). Albert will be continuing Norb’s vision of a week that includes introductory and advanced classes, individual conferences, and the camaraderie of a community of writers.
Please choose one of these classes when registering:
- Mornings – Exploring Creative Writing
- Afternoons – “Writing in Rhythm” (includes more advanced writing assignments)
- Writer Independent Study
Overview of Creative Writing
For Burgeoning Writers. This class will explore the major areas of creative writing: poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Students will consider various writing techniques, discuss journal writing, poetry and prose poems, short story writing, the personal essay and blogs, and the significance of poetic devices as the basis of all creative writing, what “story” means in our lives, as well as an overview of the promises of publication. Class sessions will be devoted to discussion, in-class writing, and constructive criticism. No one need feel intimidated or out of place regardless of age, background or ability…all that is a required is the urge and desire to write.
“Writing in Rhythm”
From Walt Whitman, to the jazz of the Beats, to Break Beat hip-hop poetry, writers put life into words on the page by recreating the music and rhythms of everyday conversation. While focusing on readings from authors with an acute rhythmic sensibility and an ear for conversation, this class will explore how “writing what you hear come in the window” (as Jack Kerouac put it) can enliven prose, as well as inform the crafting of free verse lines. Students will be challenged to hear the music and rhythm in the words around them, those on the page, and those they write themselves.
Core reading:
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Juno Diaz
- Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje
- The Dead Emcee Scrolls by Saul Williams
Optional reading (recommended but not required):
- Old Angel Midnight by Jack Kerouac
- Selected Poems of Langston Hughes, by Langston Hughes
- Song of Myself, by Walt Whitman
- Lit: A Memoir, by Mary Karr
Advanced Writing Individual Conferences
Afternoon Section: For practicing writers (any genre) with some history of publication, Albert will schedule individual meetings with advanced students who submit manuscript excerpts and/or writing projects to him one month in advance of class (10-page maximum). For further information (and before submitting materials), please contact Albert: al.degenova@yahoo.com.
Independent Study
Open to anyone with a desire to spend a week at The Clearing during the writing workshop session. No class work, writing assignments, or reading obligations. Consider yourself welcome to monitor the writing classes and programs. This could be a valuable week of insights into the writing life. Recommended as well for people who love to read and would enjoy spending a week as part of a community of fine writers.
The Clearing
Write, relax, learn…getaway from it all!!! This is famed landscape architect Jens Jensen’s dream come true. Read Albert’s essay on his relationship to The Clearing and Norbert Blei here: “Jensen’s Great Poem.”
Few of Blei’s many readers are aware of his prolific visual arts output, comprised of a large collection of colorful, topical watercolors and mixed-media paintings. He used painting as a break from long sessions at the typewriter, he often noted, and to express what can’t easily be communicated in words on a page.
poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground 
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