Collaborative Poetic Dialogues
With Ian Cognitō
This workshop is is geared to those ready to step out of their comfort zones within a supportive environment. Its starting point borrows from the traditional chain letter carried into the domain of response poems. The facilitator will take participants through a multi-phase process geared toward finding their voices -- or new tonalities within their voices. Through this intuitive, non-judgmental process, participants will find poems they didn't know they had in them. The core mechanism for this experience will be the “response poem.” This workshop will provide several opportunities for collaboration and mutually inspired creativity. Each participant will leave with four or five fresh new poems stemming from literary reactions and interactions between group members.
Ian Cognitō has been a teacher/facilitator for over 35 years. In addition to his experience as a writer, he has a background in theatre, clown, mask work, improvisational dance, and language instruction (English and French). Ian is the author, co-author, or editor of eight poetry collections including Interchange (w. Anne Marie Carson), Much Adieu about Nothing (w. Pat Smekal), and Old Bones & Battered Book Ends (an open-call anthology on Ageing). He is the publisher of a Vancouver-Island-based independent press, Repartee Press, and he was also the founder and artistic director of "15 minutes of Infamy", a word-craft cabaret based in Nanaimo.
Ian is facilitating the workshop, Collaborative Poetic Dialogues on Sunday, September 15, at 10 am.