1 Session: Sunday, November 12 from 2-4pm PT
In-Person
Max: 8 people
Course Description:
In this two-hour, generative workshop, participants will use photos and paintings to travel to new places in our imagination we may have never dared to explore before. Together we will read and dissect contemporary examples of ekphrasis poetry to understand what it is and how we might do it ourselves. Using new tools and strategies, participants will have time to generate poems from photos and art both around us and beyond.
About the Instructor: Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is a first generation Chicana born and raised in San Gabriel, California, who fondly remembers weekends spent haciendo travesuras with her cousins around her grandparents’ Boyle Heights home. Her most recent collection,
Incantation: Love Poems for Battle Sites, is a Chicana’s witness to the American ethos in a time marked by controversy, division, and transformation. Her debut collection,
Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications 2016), was written while living in a house in the shadows of Dodger Stadium in historic Solano Canyon.
Most recently, Bermejo was chosen as the first “Poet in the Parks” resident at Gettysburg National Military Park in partnership with the Poetry Foundation and the National Parks Arts Foundation. She is a former Steinbeck fellow, Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange poetry winner, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund/Money for Women grantee, Los Angeles Central Library ALOUD newer poet, and her poetry received 3rd place in the 2015 Tucson Festival of Books literary awards. She has received residencies with Hedgebrook and the Ragdale Foundation and is a proud member of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop.
Bermejo is a cofounder of Women Who Submit, a literary organization using social media and community events to empower women and non-binary authors to submit work for publication. She received a BA in Theatre Arts from California State University, Long Beach and an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She facilitates online and in-person workshops in poetry and submission strategies with UCLA Extension, Antioch University Los Angeles, Los Angeles Writing Classes as well as being available for classroom visits for university, high school, and junior high communities. She is a workshop coordinator for teen art classes with ArtworxLA.
Please note: Masks are required at all Open Books workshops and events. Thank you for understanding.
