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Promoting the Literary Arts in the Delaware
The Delaware Literary Connection (DLC) is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the literary arts in Delaware. Our membership includes poets, novelists, short story writers, essayists, journalists, video producers and those who just enjoy writing and want exposure to it.
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THE POET’S TOOLKIT
A Poetry Workshop for Novice and Experienced Poets
Sponsored by
The Delaware Literary Connection
Saturday, April 6, 2013 - 10:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Lambourn Library, 1023 Valley Road, Hockessin, Delaware 19707
The Oxford Dictionary describes poetry as “a literary work in which the expression of feeling and ideas is given intensity by the use of distinctive style and rhythm.” To bring that definition into the current century, Edefinition embraces poetry as “an imaginative awareness of experience expressed through meaning, sound and rhythmic language choices so as to evoke an emotional response. Poetry has been known to employ meter and rhyme, but this is by no means necessary. Poetry is an ancient form that has gone through numerous and drastic reinvention over time. The very nature of poetry as an authentic and individual mode of expression makes it nearly impossible to define.” Welcome to “The Poet’s Toolkit,” an interactive poetry workshop led by Pat Valdata, award-winning poet, educator and recent 2nd Saturday Poets featured reader. This workshop will be focusing on the “tools” of the trade. Part lecture, part writing, part discussion and critique, we’ll be working with poems that attendees submit when they register for the workshop. Each participant will be reading his/her poem, and as they do, we’ll be making notes and comments that will be returned to each reader at the end of the workshop, providing each participant with a packet of written feedback garnered from on-the-spot critiques of their work. Each poem will be discussed kindly and constructively. Those too shy to comment aloud will have the opportunity to give each poet their comments anonymously through their handwritten notations. Helpful handouts will be reviewed and available for you to take home. This promises to be an instructive and enjoyable workshop. Be prepared to have fun!
Patricia Valdata’s first full-length poetry book, Inherent Vice, was published in 2011 by Pecan Grove Press. Her chapbook, Looking for Bivalve, by Pecan Grove Press in 2002, was a competition finalist. Pat’s poetry has appeared most recently in Little Patuxent Review, Passager and the anthologies Challenges for the Delusional (ed. Christine Malvasi, Jane Street Press, 2012) and The Cento: A Collection of Collage Poems (ed. Theresa Welford, Red Hen Press, 2011). She is currently working on a series of poems about women aviation pioneers. Pat is a 2013 recipient of a grant from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation for a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has twice been awarded a grant for her poetry from the Maryland State Arts Foundations and she is a four-time winner of the Eastern Shore Regional Poetry Competition. Pat has also written two novels: Crosswind (Wind Canyon Books, 1997) and the award-winning The Other Sister (Plain View Press, 2008). She recently completed the manuscript of a third novel, Fall Squared, for which she is seeking representation. Pat has an MFA in writing from Goddard College. She has taught writing and literature courses for the University of Maryland University College (UMUC), University of Delaware and Cecil College. A native of New Jersey, she now lives in Elkton, Maryland.
About Inherent Vice: “In this, her debut full-length poetry book, Pat Valdata plays with the multiple meanings of inherent vice: how objects break down, self-destruct. 'It all degrades,' she says. Like the 'monarch [butterfly] aimed for Mexico, we are all, like here, on borrowed time.' Valdata gives us a litany of things that disappear: a 1955 postcard of a one-stop shop, data from the 1930 census, a surfer facing fifty, Lot's wife, Elvis, George Harrison ('all things must pass'). And yet beauty trumps, triumphs, slaps down the final card, whether it's a glass shape blown from a molten mass, 'hope bursting like popcorn in a microwave,' or God kick-ing off her pumps and pouring a glass of Malbec at the end of a hard day. Graced by clean lines, sharp images, economy of words, these are poems that will linger, long after you close the covers of the book.” —Barbara Crooker, author of More.
The workshop will be provided at no cost and will be limited to 20 participants. Please send one poem by email to Barbara Gray at
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by April 2, 2013. If you don’t have access to a computer or email, send a typed copy of your poem to Poetry Workshop, DLC, 237 Cayman Court, Wilmington, DE 19808. Bring your own lunch or plan to eat at one of the nearby eateries within walking distance of the library.
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