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Creative Writing Field Seminars
Pittsburgh: May 2-21
The 'burgh: Invitation to an Interior
Instructor/Guide: Marc Nieson
COURSE DESCRIPTION
As fellow Pittsburgher Annie Dillard has said, "Seeing is very much a matter of verbalization. Unless I call attention to what passes before my eyes, I simply won't see it." This field seminar will embrace that quote as its credo. We'll stay "local", but certainly not familiar. Our intent is to become explorers of our own city, yet head off the typically beaten tourist path to encounter and "re-see" landscapes and neighborhoods and 'burghers on a more intimate scale. Pittsburgh is not only basking in the institutional echoes and philanthropy of its industrial heydays, but experiencing a vibrant grassroots urban and cultural renaissance today.
What's going on in Pittsburgh's streets and galleries and rivers and parks now? Can we recognize how it relates to where this city has been, and where it is heading? And, above all, how as writers can we personally engage in, if not help shape, that burgeoning energy and vision?
Tell anyone local you're from Pittsburgh, and they'll ask "where in Pittsburgh?" After all, the 'burgh is very diverse, very neighborhood-centric. By trekking and tapping its varied backyards and borderlands as both inspiration and text, we'll be endeavoring to both re-define and re-write our definitions of place and self. Coming to assess first-hand what makes each individual community endure &/or blossom. Coming to recognize what might be communal across all our relative geographic "bridges".
So, come join us on this journey:
- a guided architectural bike tour of the Southside (from haute-couture and cliffside dwelling to Goodwill and used bookstores)
- Northside's historic Mexican War Streets (cutting edge galleries at The Mattress Factory and a private audience with City of Asylum's exiled writers Huang Jiang and Horatio Moya)
- Homewood's literary nexus or ongoing rubble? (tour the refurbished Public Library, seminar with novelist Albert French, neighborhood open mic)
- Point Breeze's Frick House and green house, Frick Park.
- The Lower Hill/Uptown (Gist Street reading) followed by East Side's First Friday's gallery crawl, Attack Theatre, and Shadow Lounge performance poetry
- Meet Friendship/Garfield's redevelopment manager, and tour The Glass Factory, The Edge (architects), Dance Alloy Theater, and The Quiet Storm.
- Lawrenceville's endangered Carnegie Library, and factory tour. Choice Cuts reading.
- Beechwood Nature Reserve, for early morning guided birdwatching.
- The Strip lunch and personal interviewing of the Strip's unsung (i.e. Penn Mac's cheese cutters, Wholey's fish de-scaler, an Asian market's tofu chef, street-side vendors, beggers, homeless, transvestites…).
- Trek a segment of the Rachel Carson Trail, w/ local flora expert/guide. Open-air open mic.
- Downtown and the culture of sports. Sports Museum, and a lecture with Jo Tavener on "Baseball as Metaphor", followed by a Pirates' Baseball game. Getting further perspective at the confluence of our three rivers, then gazing at stars/planets at the Observatory.
- Possible added road trip to Home, Pennsylvania or an overnight camping/canoe trip.
(Note: Itinerary subject to change)
In short, as the proverb goes, the journey changes the traveler, not the destination. Prepare to see and read and write this city/self as never before. The course will blend workshop, model readings, and experiential learning, and invites writers/explorers of all genres and risk-levels. Ultimately, know the journey's design is to leave our own trail of fresh, daring words on paper. Or as Pablo Neruda once wrote, "All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are."
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