How is one's literature culturally bound? How are North American literatures different from European? The focus of the week's workshop will be difference, as we examine what we write as well as some of the important poems of major European poets. For example, how might you complete a poem--by the great French poet Henri Michaux--that begins, "When you walk in the country..."? How might you complete this poem after spending five days roaming Auvillar and its surroundings? Participants in the workshop will be asked to write and wander each morning, to join a group critique session most afternoons, and to read a few assigned European poems in translation (to attend three or four talks by the instructor). Individual manuscript consultation with the instructor will also be available.

In the week's forays, our inquiries will be creative: we will attempt to answer our various questions by reading and writing poems. The two main goals of the week's work will be to understand from inside a poem what it means to write one's own cultural experience, and to develop a broader knowledge of major European poets of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Includes: All instruction, all housing (double occupancy), all breakfasts and lunches, four dinners, pick up and drop off at transportation centers in Toulouse or Agen. Single occupancy requires a $200 supplement.

Work-study Scholarship
There is one partial work-study scholarship available for this workshop. Click here for more information and application guidelines.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Alan Michael Parker is the author of four collections of poems, Days Like Prose, The Vandals, Love Song with Motor Vehicles, and the forthcoming Elephants & Butterflies (BOA Editions, Ltd., June, 2008), as well as a novel, Cry Uncle. He is also Editor of The Imaginary Poets, Co-editor of The Routledge Anthology of Cross-Gendered Verse, and Editor for North America of Who's Who in 20th Century World Poetry. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Paris Review, Pleiades, and The Yale Review, among other magazines; his prose appears regularly in journals including The Believer, The New York Times Book Review, and The New Yorker. The recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a Pushcart Prize and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, Alan Michael Parker teaches at Davidson College, where he is Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing, and at Queens University, where he is a Core Faculty member in the low-residency M.F.A. program. He lives in Davidson, NC, with his wife, the painter Felicia van Bork, and their son, Eli.

 Above, photo by Karen Bell