Events

In celebration of National Poetry Month, we’re holding two  sessions  of  “Feedback, Not Friction: A Poetry Critique Group for Women of Color” this April. This workshop is specifically for Women of Color to include women-identifying and gender-nonconforming individuals. Participants will meet virtually to discuss and give feedback on original, previously shared poetry at a round-table discussion facilitated by poet and publisher Christina Butcher. Using workshop principles presented by Felicia Rose Chavez in The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop, we’ll engage in collective support; study and discuss each writer’s style, voice, and writing habits; discuss craft elements to give and receive targeted, craft-based feedback; and assess the challenges and successes of submitted drafts. This workshop is offered virtually to participants on April 15th or April 30th, 2021, from 5-8PM (PST).

Join BCP for a workshop exploring the art of lying in poetry, facilitated by Tacoma poet and educator Michael Haeflinger. We will look at instances of hyperbole and interpretation, but also at examples of flat-out making stuff up in service of a great poetic Truth. Our workshop will look at poems by Wisława Szymborska, Ulrich Berkes, Nikki Giovanni, and Jim Harrison, and make space to write a draft of a poem that examines notions of truth and fiction. The workshop will be held on May 20, 2021, from 6:00 – 7:15 PM (PST), via Zoom.

BONUS: Participants will receive a FREE copy of Haeflinger’s poetry collection, Low Static Rage, upon workshop registration! 

For more details on the workshop and the workshop facilitator, or to reserve a seat in the workshop, please visit the “Lie Your Ass Off” workshop page, here. 

Blue Cactus Press invites you to participate in a FREE, virtual poetry workshop facilitated by BCP author Esther Vincent Xueming on June 17, 2021, at 7 PM (PST). In this workshop, we will examine Gaard’s definition of ecofeminism, which focuses on the politics of relations or “interbeing” as essential to how the woman finds herself located in time and place as an intersectional being. We will further explore the concept of empathy, and discuss Gruen’s metaphor of “entangled empathy” which Gaard relates to “compassion and action” typified by eco-social justice. With these understandings in mind, we will read poems using an intersectional ecofeminist lens in order to answer these questions: How can an intersectional ecofeminist reading of a poem empower marginalised groups and promote eco-social justice? Can poetry enable us to (in the words of Donna Haraway) ‘make kin’ with other person-beings that we share this earth with, and in doing so, cultivate an “entangled empathy” to foster compassion and action? To find out more about the workshop and Esther Vincent Xueming, and to register for the event (registration required), see the Entangled Empathy workshop page, here.