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where & when
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 8
8:30 - 4 PMSKIRBALL CULTURAL
CENTER
Los Angeles, CA 90049
KEYNOTE
SAM SAX
Sam Sax is the author of the poetry collections PIG (Scribner, 2023); bury it (Wesleyan University Press, 2018), winner of the James Laughlin Award; madness (Penguin, 2017), winner of the National Poetry Series and selected by Terrance Hayes; and four chapbooks. They earned a BA from Oberlin College and an MFA in poetry from the University of Texas at Austin. They have received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lambda Literary, and Stanford University.Sax is a two-time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion. They have won a Gulf Coast Prize, an Iowa Review Award, and an American Literary Award. Their poems have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Granta, and other journals. In 2018, sax was awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. They currently work as a lecturer in the ITALIC Program at Stanford University.
SPECIAL GUESTS
Angélica Maria
Angélica Maria is a Chicana writer & musician from the San Fernando Valley, CA. She was a finalist of the National Poetry Slam 2017 amongst the top 400 competing poets within the U.S, Australia and Canada. She also ranked in the top 10 of women poets in the country in 2019 for the Women of the World Poetry Slam. Her work has been featured on Button Poetry, Tedx, Facebook, and in 2021 she was hired to write the first Spanglish poem for a national sports team. The campaign aired on national television for The USL Women's Soccer League's National Campaign, in collaboration with Puma. Her most recent project is a poetic Spanglish musical EP, Dulzura, which releases on October 15th, funded in part by Creative Capital and produced by an all Mexican women band and orchestra in Mexico City.
ETHNIC STUDIES PANEL
Join us in the morning for a compelling panel discussion about Ethnic Studies and its place in our schools. How might we involve the arts, especially writing and poetry? How do we demonstrate to our students the crucial role that literature has played in history and social movements, from Claude McKay in 1919 to Rodolfo Gonzalez in 1967? What are the best ways to encourage their critical thinking and support their voices?
Our panel will include poets and scholars F. Douglas Brown, from Loyola HS, winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, renowned author Luis J. Rodriguez, poet and educator Mike Sonksen, and Dr. Amrah Salomón, Ethnic Studies professor from UC Santa Barbara. Bring your own questions and ideas, broad or specific, or simply listen to some deep consideration of history and poetry, and the strength and controversy surrounding this good idea for the students of California.
TOASTER
TOASTER is the Co creator of Big Kid Slam, a poetry slam invested in centering marginalized voices and terrible prizes. TOASTER has competed at every level of poetry slam, most recently competing as an Individual World Poetry Slam finalist. Their work can be found on Button Poetry, All Def Digital, Sofar Sounds and National Public Radio.
Additional
Workshops with:
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faq
The Poetic Convergence is a one-day convening of teachers, student leaders, arts champions, and poetic giants for the purpose of creating and sustaining poetic communities inside Los Angeles county schools and their neighborhoods. The Poetic Convergence offers attendees interactive workshops, engaging keynotes, and open mics to build community and creativity among our schools. Join us to transform the educational experiences and outcomes of our youth.
Schools who participate in the Get Lit Curriculum are welcome to bring up to 6 participants. We would like to welcome a mix of student leaders and educators with no more than 4 student leaders per school. Students must be accompanied by educators.
If you’re interested in joining us but don’t teach Get Lit at your school yet, please reach out to Andrea@GetLit.org.
FREE to schools who participate in the Get Lit Curriculum or are invited as guests. Schools that are not in the Get Lit network will pay an entry fee - reach out to Laurie@GetLit.org to inquire.
Unfortunately, this event is only open to schools. Please check out Get Lit’s other events that are open to the public.
Yes! We will be serving complimentary breakfast and lunch.
There is complimentary parking in the underground garage at the Skirball Cultural Center.
Morning Keynote:
WHAT IT IS & WILL BE
As poets, we are often tasked with paying deep attention to the world and describing what we witness. But what do we do when witnessing the world starts to take a toll on us? What happens when we shift our attention to worlds that don’t (yet) exist? Franny discusses their journey into speculative poetry and how bringing elements of sci-fi and magical realism helped them start to explore what writer Toni Cade Bambara meant when she said: “The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.”
Afternoon Workshop: WRITING SPECULATIVE POETRY
In this workshop, we will look at several examples of poems that imagine, propose, speculate, or wish for alternate worlds. We will experiment with the speculative mode, rewrite narratives, and try out some world-building in our poems. Come ready to play!
Lunchtime Keynote: TOWARD A POETICS OF INVESTIGATION AND DISCOVERY
Poetry—the poet Carl Phillips writes in his essay, Muscularity and Eros: On Syntax—is patterned language. Patterned language reveals patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior in an individual life. Can writing a poem help a poet more honestly understand their life? Can revising a poem help a poet change their life?
Using “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden and “How It Felt” by Sharon Olds, this talk will think through the poetics, and politics, of writing toward investigation and discovery. It will consider how a poem can produce new knowledge about human experience, and how a poem committed to radical freedom should, perhaps, begin with a question about human experience—a quest into unknown territory and the Territory of the Unknown.
Afternoon Workshop: TELL IT LIKE IT IS
While what we have heard is true—that we should "show" and "not tell"—sometimes we have to tell it like it is. In this generative writing workshop, we will read "Autobiography of Eve" by Ansel Elkins and define the "it" as the discovery the poet makes about the emotional or psychological landscape of their lived experience. We will look at how the act of discovery rather than the act of announcement must always be a priority in poetry, and we will see how fundamental elements of poetry—such as syntax, received form, and the image—can be used to show AND tell the discovery "like it is." Finally, we will write new poems that demonstrate what we will have learned together and hold a Q&A that invites any questions poets might have about their poems, poetry, and poetry writing.
