Event Description

How to Tell a Poem and Other Solo Acts: A performance workshop
with Deborah Edler Brown

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Poets and writers take such care with words; you edit, massage and repeat them until a plain collection of letters and spaces embodies a place, a time, a person on the page. But all too often, when you read the piece aloud, something goes flat. The writer speaks the words but never draws the listener into the poem or story.

How to Tell a Poem will teach you how to release the piece from the page. This workshop is not about memorizing and microphones; it is about using your words, your voice and your imagination to enter the world of the work. It is about getting out of the way so that the poem or story can speak for itself.

Deborah Edler Brown is an award-winning poet and journalist, performer and storyteller, author and teacher. Her poetry has appeared in three anthologies, as well as in various journals such as Nimrod and Kalliope. She is a reporter for Time magazine and co-author of “Grandparents as Parents: A Survival Guide to Raising a Second Family” [Guilford Press, 1995.] As a performer, Deborah tells poems and stories in theaters, libraries, bookstores and bars across the country. She was the 1997 Head-to-Head Haiku Champion and a member of the 1998 Los Angeles National Poetry Slam Team. She holds a degree in Creative Writing from Brown University and is the 2005 recipient of the Sue Saniel Elkind Poetry Prize. Deborah also teaches private writing workshops in Los Angeles.