Popular Poets Lisa Russ Spaar, Bianca Spriggs to Present at Women Writers Event

LEXINGTON, Ky. (June 7, 2016) — A duo of popular poets, Lisa Russ Spaar and Bianca Lynne Spriggs, will present workshops on the form as well as a joint reading of their poetry at the 2016 Kentucky Women Writers Conference running Sept. 16-17, in Lexington. The pair's work will also be among the topics of a free poetry workshop presented by the conference June 11, at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.

Lisa Russ Spaar, one of three finalists for the 2015 Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching, is the author of many collections of poetry, including "Glass Town," "Blue Venus," "Satin Cash," "Vanitas, Rough" and the forthcoming "Orexia" (Persea, 2017). She is the editor of "Monticello in Mind: Fifty Contemporary Poems on Jefferson," "Acquainted with the Night: Insomnia Poems" and "All that Mighty Heart: London Poems." A collection of her essays, "The Hide-and-Seek Muse: Annotations of Contemporary Poetry," was published by Drunken Boat Media in 2013.

Spaars has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, Rona Jaffe Award, Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize, Library of Virginia Award for Poetry and the 2013-2014 Faculty Award of the Jefferson Scholars Foundation. Her poems have also appeared in the "Best American Poetry" series, Poetry, Boston Review, Blackbird, IMAGE, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Slate, Shenandoah, The Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review and many other journals and quarterlies, and her commentaries and columns about poetry appear regularly or are forthcoming in The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books and elsewhere. A professor of English and creative writing at University of Virginia, Spaar has taught at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Seattle Pacific University and the Vermont Studio Center.

Spaar will present a poetry workshop at the Kentucky Women Writers Conference titled "'It’s All About That Bass': Creating Depth and Getting Beyond Surfaces, Knee-Jerk Habits, and Mono-Registers in Poems." The session will explore ways to recognize these bad habits and avoid offering just the “melody,” the plot line, the treble or surface of a poem. The workshop will be generative, encouraging its participants to explore and deepen into their obsessions even as they experiment beyond modes, habits and stylistic gestures that may have become knee-jerk or comfortable. 

"All serious writers run the risk of falling into certain familiar, 'successful' sonic, syntactic, thematic, figurative, rhythmic and other gestures that, if we’re not careful, can keep us from fully developing our poems or that allow us to shut our poems down too soon," Spaar said.

Participants in the conference workshop should bring 16 copies of a poem by someone else that they feel works on all registers (story, image, music, structure) as well as 16 copies of a poem of their own that the student feels needs work. Over the course of two sessions, the group will consider what it means to risk making forays outside of their comfort zone as poets. In addition to revising one problem poem, each student will write at least one new poem. The Spaar workshop will run 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Sept. 16 and 17, at the Carnegie Center.

Later that same day, Spaar will join poet and University of Kentucky English doctoral candidate Bianca Lynne Spriggs for a reading for conference participants beginning 4:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 16, at the Carnegie Center.

A short featuring a poem from Spriggs' most recent collection "Call Her by Her Name." 

Affrilachian poet and Cave Canem Fellow, Bianca Lynne Spriggs, is a multidisciplinary artist from Lexington. Currently a doctoral candidate at UK, she holds degrees from Transylvania University and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Named to the Top 30 Performance Poets by The Root, Spriggs is a recipient of a 2013 Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship in Poetry, multiple Artist Enrichment and Arts Meets Activism grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. 

Spriggs is the author of "Kaffir Lily," "How Swallowtails Become Dragons," "Call Her By Her Name" and the forthcoming "The Galaxy Is a Dance Floor" (Argos Books, 2016), and is a co-editor for "Circe’s Lament: An Anthology of Wild Women" and the forthcoming "Undead: Ghouls, Ghosts, and More" (Apex Publications, 2017). Her work may be found in numerous journals and anthologies, including "New Growth: Recent Kentucky Writings," "America! What’s My Name?!," "Red Holler: Contemporary Appalachian Literature," "Fan Phenomena: Star Trek," The Louisville Review, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Union Station, Rabbit Catastrophe Review, Tidal Basin Review, Muzzle, Caduceus, Alehouse, Reverie, Appalachian Heritage, Still: The Journal, Duende, Drunken Boat, Oxford American and others. Spriggs is the literary arts liaison for the Carnegie Center, creator and program director for "The SwallowTale Project: Creative Writing for Incarcerated Women," as well as managing editor for pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Art & Culture and poetry editor for Apex Magazine. 

Spriggs will present a poetry workshop at the Kentucky Women Writers Conference titled "Dreamscapes: Surreal Imagery for Creating Memorable Poems." In this generative workshop, participants will create fresh, startling, memorable images through exploring surrealism, a subgenre of speculative poetry. The group will read and analyze classic and contemporary poems that incorporate surreal imagery and then work to craft resounding images of their own.

"Creating lasting images and sensory-oriented experiences will ensure that readers think about your work long after they've read it," Spriggs said.

Spriggs' workshop will run 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Sept. 16 and 17, at the Carnegie Center.

Only Kentucky Women Writers Conference registrants will be able to participate in the readings and poetry workshops presented by Spaar and Spriggs. To register visit: http://womenwriters.as.uky.edu/register.

Locals have an opportunity to experience Spaar and Spriggs' poetry first at the conference's upcoming free poetry workshop from 10 a.m.-noon Saturday, June 11, at the Carnegie Center. This program will consist of four 25-minute sessions where participants will use exercises and artifacts to generate new poems. Each exercise will be based on a poem by one of the presenting poets at the 2016 Kentucky Women Writers Conference — Natalie Diaz, Spaar and Spriggs. The workshop will be led by Kimberly Miller and Katie Riley, leaders of the community writing group Poezia and members of the conference board of advisors.

While free and open to the public, enrollment is limited for the June poetry workshop. Individuals interested in attending should reserve a spot by contacting Kimberly Miller at zenomiller@yahoo.com.

Now in its 38th year, the Kentucky Women Writers Conference is an annual event known for bringing notable women writers to Lexington for readings, writing workshops and discussions. A program housed in the UK College of Arts and Sciences, the conference is made possible in part by continued community partnerships, including its primary venue, the Carnegie Center. Registration for this conference is now open.

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MEDIA CONTACT: Whitney Hale, 859-257-8716; whitney.hale@uky.edu