Get a Personalized Poem from Workshop Leader and Poet, Lorna Dee Cervantes

On Sunday, the wonderful Lorna Dee Cervantes read some of her works at Sunday Kind of Love. As she read, she mentioned an ongoing project, born out of creativity and necessity (as she says on her website, "desperate times require desperate measures, require love"). The project involves writing love poems for strangers, bringing to mind Cyrano, the letter-writers of ancient China, and others gifted with language who use it to bring love and joy to others. As she read examples of the work the project had inspired, Lorna referred to it as "poetry busking," and the idea is simple: provide her with some information, and she will write a 100 word love poem for you. For a small fee of course (this includes a signed copy). The necessary information, as well as contact information is below. If you want to know more about Lorna, visit her blog, or even better, come to the workshop she's leading at the Institute for Policy Studies tomorrow (see link for more information).

Send the following information to lornadeecervantes [at] mac [dot] com to receive an original poem:

My name is:
My email is:
My address is:

I'll pay ($10+) ________ for a poem in (any style) ________ or __________.

I'll get it by email or I'll add $5 and get it by email and print.

I want a poem: for me, for my love, to our love (You can also have poems written for family members and friends).

I want a poem for _____________ that expresses _________________________________.

Once you've got all that filled out, provide some inspiration and insight:

Some words:
Some sounds:
Some sights/images:
Some tastes:
Some feelings, including tactile:

Help support Lorna and poetry, and show your love for someone important with an amazing gift.

Sunday Kind of Love This Sunday June 21

Return to Sunday Kind of Love on the first day of summer in the Langston Room at Busboys and Poets at 14th and V NW this Sunday, June 21, 4 - 6 p.m.

This reading will feature Lorna Dee Cervantes, Alice B. Fogel, and Reb Livingston.

Lorna Dee Cervantes is the author of DRIVE: The First Quartet (Wing Press, 2006) and From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger (Arte Público Press, 1991) and Emplumada(1981), which won an American Book Award. Her work has been included in many anthologies including Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry (eds. Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Jennifer Gillan, 1994), No More Masks! An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Women Poets (ed. Florence Howe, 1993), and After Aztlan: Latino Poets of the Nineties (ed. Ray González, 1992). In 1995 she received a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award. She is also leading a workshop on Saturday the 27th. Register by emailing melissa.dcpaw [at] gmail.com. Also, check out the FaceBook event page

* Alice B. Fogel is the author of Be That Empty(Harbor Mountain Press, 2007), I Love This Dark World (Zoland, 1996) and Elemental, Zoland Books (Cambridge, 1993). Her poems have been anthologized in The Best American Poetry, Poets Choice, and many other anthologies. She teaches at the University of New Hampshire.



Reb Livingston is the author of Your Ten Favorite Words (Coconut Books, 2007), Pterodactyls Soar Again (Whole Coconut Chapbook Series, 2006), co-author of Wanton Textiles (No Tell Books, 2006) and co-editor of The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel anthology series. Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, and other publications. She's also the editor of No Tell Motel and publisher of No Tell Books.

*Photo credit John Clarke Russ

Workshop Opportunity and Updates

Split This Rock and the Sunday Kind of Love reading series invite you to participate in a writing workshop with Lorna Dee Cervantes (who is reading at Sunday Kind of Love on Sunday the 21), Saturday, June 27, from 1-4 pm. Thanks to support from the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities, the cost is $25. The workshop is open to all levels of writing from beginning to advanced—and will be geared towards helping you generate new work. (Our next and final writing workshop of the season will be in August with Terrance Hayes... stay tuned for more details on that).

Register today; send an email to melissa.dcpaw@gmail.com.

Workshop Description: Ecopoetics: A Poet's Way of Knowledge

There are about as many ways to write a poem as there are people on the planet. In poetry, as in love, there are no absolutes, and that's the only absolute. So, how does one make sense of the plethora? How, when faced with the whole enchilada, does one go about the process? For poetry is a process, above all else. As Coleridge once wrote, "Poetry is the pleasurable activity of the journey itself."

In this workshop we will map out the journey by dividing the poetic universe (multiverse) into four distinct phases of the creative/critical process: GENERATION, SELECTION, Re-VISION, and CRITICAL EVALUATION. Much the way we splay out the patterns on a globe into east, south, west and north in order to get anywhere, no individual phase is more important than another and each has its own distinct character and unique phenomena. We will participate in exercises designed to match each phase of the process - rather than focus undue or premature attention upon poetry as product. We will discuss and consider many roads leading us there, to the finished poem ("finished" in the orgasmic sense rather than as executioner or, worse, as taxidermist.) We should, by the end of the day, come away with at least 4 new poems and a sense of our own patterns and patterning (for better or worse) and we will acquire a new toolbox of techniques and methods, a new confidence and playfulness, a new sense of our own strengths and weaknesses as writers, and maybe even become acquainted with our own inner critic as well as become accustomed to the sound of our voice as well as our own individual "Voice" as a poet.

Each workshop will be unique to its participants. This workshop respects all and expects such from participants. Expect diversity. Expect to learn how to pleasure yourself - so to speak.

Lorna Dee Cervantes is the author of DRIVE: The First Quartet (Wing Press, 2006), From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger (Arte Público Press, 1991) and Emplumada (1981), which won an American Book Award. Her work has been included in many anthologies including Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry (eds. Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Jennifer Gillan, 1994), No More Masks! An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Women Poets (ed. Florence Howe, 1993), and After Aztlan: Latino Poets of the Nineties (ed. Ray González, 1992). In 1995 she received a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award.

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For an update on poets reading at Artomatic, see First Person Plural, the blog of the Writer's Center.