This workshop was offered in 2022. See this year’s workshops.

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Heroes and Villains:
Writing Persona Poems

Writing Workshop in New Jersey
January 14-17, 2022
Led by Cynthia Dewi Oka

Writing in persona can help us gain perspective about ourselves and our social contexts, and expand our emotional, intellectual and aesthetic registers. Utilizing “heroes” and “villains” from popular culture and our own histories, this workshop will offer generative and analytical exercises to explore voice, perspective and world-building within persona poems, as well as consider the ethics of writing in persona. We will learn how writing from different identities guides the way we build connections between parts of the poem, the poem and ourselves, us and our readers. Come empty-handed to write something brand new.

*Limited to just 10 participants.*

 

“It was wonderful to feel welcomed as a newcomer, while getting the sense that I had joined a larger community. I wrote four great poems and a lot of new material; hopefully I met lifelong friends! Thank you so much.”
~ Maria, Myrtle Beach, SC

 

Biography

Cynthia Dewi Oka is the author of Fire Is Not a Country (Northwestern University Press, 2021), Salvage (Northwestern University Press, 2017) and Nomad of Salt and Hard Water (Thread Makes Blanket Press, 2016). A recipient of the Tupelo Quarterly Poetry Prize and the Leeway Transformation Award, her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Poetry Magazine, Academy of American Poets, The Rumpus, PANK, Guernica, ESPNW and elsewhere. In collaboration with Philadelphia Contemporary, Friends of the Rail Park and Asian Arts Initiative, her experimental poem, “Future Revisions,” was exhibited at the Rail Park billboard in Philadelphia from July to August 2021. She has taught creative writing at Bryn Mawr College and is a 2021-2022 Poet in Residence at the Amy Clampitt House in Lenox, MA. She is originally from Bali, Indonesia. Learn more on her website.