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Writing as Witness

Poetry and Public Life: Writing as Witness
We might not consider poetry a public act, yet poetry has always been a mode of truth-telling--especially in this era of political, social, and environmental extremity.What does it mean to connect our writing to our public lives as citizens--to working for cultural, social, political, and environmental change as well as inner transformation? How may creative writing function as an ethical and political as well as an aesthetic endeavor, in an interconnected, rapidly changing global society? We'll look at the work and lives of some poets who have managed a larger public presence and contribution from within intensely committed writing lives, do some mapping of our own writing lives within our communities, discuss ways that writing can bear witness in the world, and write our own.

Carolyne Wright is the author of nine books of poetry, including Mania Klepto: The Book of Eulene (2011); A Change of Maps (2006), nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a finalist for an Idaho Prize and Alice Fay di Castagnola Award; and Seasons of Mangoes & Brainfire (2005), winner of a Blue Lynx Prize and an American Book Award. Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry 2009, in The Pushcart Prize XXXIV: Best of the Small Presses (2010 Edition), and in magazines, including the Iowa Review, North American Review, Southern Review, and Triquarterly.

Wright has received several awards from the Poetry Society of America; fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the New York State Arts Council, and the Seattle and King County Arts Commissions; and residencies at Yaddo, Millay Colony, Vermont Studio Center, and Jentel, among others. She is a contributing editor for the Pushcart Prizes and a senior editor at Lost Horse Press, for whom she edited the anthology, Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workspace (2015).

A Seattle native who studied with Elizabeth Bishop, Richard Hugo, and William Stafford, Wright has taught and been a visiting writer at conferences, colleges, and universities, including Harvard, Radcliffe, Emory University, and the University of Miami. She moved back to Seattle in 2005 and teaches for the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA Program.
more at:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/carolyne-wright
&
http://www.losthorsepress.org/catalog/raising-lilly-ledbetter-women-poets-occupy-the-workspace/

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