Workshop Retreats and Weekend Workshops
The Millay Colony for the Arts offers four-day retreat workshops on Colony's sylvan setting. Each class includes twelve hours of workshop time, all meals, and ample time to work, ruminate and explore our lush natural surroundings. Private bedrooms and spacious private studios are available for all participants.
These workshops offer artists a chance to delve into their work, explore new ideas, meet extraordinary teaching artists and collaborate with others while spending intense work-time on our gorgeous campus. Fragrant with blueberries, thyme, and wildflowers, the quiet loveliness of our campus provides uninterrupted calm and inspiration—the perfect retreat for creativity and relaxation.
We also offer a program of Weekend Workshops at the lovely Trisha Brown Studio in Manhattan. These two-day/eight-hour workshops offer intenstive sessions with some of the most exciting teaching artists around. Lunch and coffee included both days.
2012 is HERE:: Workshop Retreats with Carole Maso and Tracie Morris; Weekend Workshops with Frances Richard, Rachel Levitsky and Christian Hawkey, and Patricia Spears Jones.
The Beauty of the Image with Carole Maso
May 30 to June 2 2012
In this class, we will discuss how to access and use resonant emblems from one's life and transform them into fictive shapes of meaning, urgency and beauty.
We will work on making our own forms, exploring various literary, musical, philosophical and visual modes in order to get close to our subjects.
Carole Maso is the author of ten books including the novels The Art Lover, AVA, The American Woman in the Chinese Hat and Defiance; prose poems, Aureole and Beauty is Convulsive; a book of essays, Break Every Rule; and a memoir, The Room Lit By Roses. She is Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University and she lives in the Hudson River Valley. She says of her work, "I believe my books, darkly imagined, deeply emotional, are no less accessible than others, and require only a certain faith and willingness to surrender in order to be entered. My desire is to create spacious fields of narration in which the reader might feel alive and vibrant and possible and free."
Generating Sound in Poetry with Tracie Morris
August 30 to September 2 2012
In this course we will explore the relationship between body, page and voice. At the end of the course students can present page-based or space-based work to the community.
We'll be doing physical exercises and writing. The workshop is not restricted to any one medium and a cross-disciplinary approach is welcomed.
Tracie Morris is an multidisciplinary poet, performer and scholar and works extensively as a sound artist, writer, bandleader and actor. Her installations have been presented at the Whitney Biennial, Ronald Feldman Gallery, the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning and the New Museum. She holds an MFA in poetry from Hunter College and a PhD in Performance Studies from New York University. Dr. Morris is an Associate Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at Pratt Institute. Her poetry book, TDL: To Do w/ John (2012) is published by Zasterle Press. Rhyme Scheme, a longer poetic manuscript is published by Chax Press for publication in 2012. She is also developing two audio projects: The Tracie Morris Band and sharpmorris, a collaboration with composer Elliott Sharp.
Weekend Workshops at Trisha Brown Studios in Soho
During the months of April, May and June 2012 we will offer weekend workshops with Rachel Levitsky and Christian Hawkey, Frances Richard and Patricia Spears Jones. Full Details coming soon...
Recuperative Poetics Workshop with Rachel Levitsky and Christian Hawkey
April 14 & 15 AND April 28 & 29
Christian Hawkey has written two full-length poetry collections (The Book of Funnels and Citizen Of, both from Wave Books), four chapbooks, and the cross-genre book Ventrakl (2010, Ugly Duckling Presse). In 2006 he received a Creative Capital Innovative Literature Award. In 2008 he was a DAAD Artist-in-Berlin Fellow. He translates contemporary German poetry, and with the German poet Uljana Wolf he translates the Austrian writer Ilse Aichinger. His own work has been translated into over a dozen languages.
Rachel Levitsky is the author of Neighbor (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009), Under the Sun (Futurepoem Books, 2002), and DEARLY, (A+Bend Press, 1999). Her book The Story of My Accident Is Ours is forthcoming from Future Poem Books. In 1999, Rachel started Belladonna* as a reading series at the Bluestockings Women’s Bookstore. She is now a founding member of the Belladonna* Collaborative.
Critical Writing as Creative Practice with Frances Richard
May 5 & 6
It’s tempting to think of the artist and the critic as adversaries, or at least as opposites—one creating and the other evaluating the work. But “to criticize” comes from the Greek word meaning “to decide,” and to write critically means, fundamentally, to decide what you think—to explore your options, consider your questions, and survey the lay of your land. Knowing how to accurately and incisively describe and contextualize one’s own work is, of course, a survival skill required for any working artist. More fundamentally, however, the ability to analyze, illuminate and comment on artifacts and concepts that please, provoke, and infuratiate you—or to address issues in the culture at large to which an artist can bring unique perspective—is to take ideas themselves as creative materials.
Starting from our own current projects, verbal or visual, and dipping into artists’ writings and critical prose from the notes of Marcel Duchamp and the essays of Lyn Hejinian to Cabinet Magazine, this workshop will introduce writing as a technique for alert and generative analysis in and beyond the studio. Develop a vocabulary for descriptive and speculative discussion of specific media or works-in-progress; learn to use free-writing and other exercises to clarify goals and articulate ongoing (or secret) interests; break writer’s block; and experiment with finding your own ways to move between words and forms, and between words in their many forms.
Frances Richard’s second volume of poems, The Phonemes, was recently released from Les Figues Press; later this year Futurepoem will release a third book titled Anarch. She is the author of See Through (Four Way Books, 2003) and the chapbooks Anarch. (Woodland Editions, 2008) and Shaved Code (Portable Press at YoYo Labs, 2008). With Jeffrey Kastner and Sina Najafi she is co-author of Odd Lots: Revisiting Gordon Matta-Clark’s “Fake Estates” (Cabinet Books, 2005). She has been a member of the editorial teams at Fence and Cabinet magazines, writes frequently about contemporary art, and teaches at Barnard College and the Rhode Island School of Design. She lives in Brooklyn.
New Writing: Poetry Workshop with Patricia Spears Jones
June 16 & 17
Workshop Details TBA
Patricia Spears Jones is the author of two collections books of poetry: The Weather That Kills and Femme du Monde. Jones was the co-editor for Ordinary Women: Poems of New York City Women. A native of Arkansas, Patricia Spears Jones has lived in New York City since the mid-1970s where she has been involved in the city's poetry and theater scenes as poet, editor, anthologist, teacher and former Program Coordinator for the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church and Mabou Mines, the internationally acclaimed theater collective which is celebrating its 40th year.
Workshop Retreat & Weekend Workshop Details
Workshop Retreat Schedule: Each day begins with a fresh breakfast followed by a three- hour workshop at 10:00 AM. Total workshop time for the retreat will be twelve hours. The afternoon can be spent working in the studio, visiting local sites, swimming in a nearby lake or walking the mountain trails. Dinner is served overlooking our gorgeous meadows. Evening hours are devoted to worktime.
Retreat Fees: $600 includes tuition, private room, private studio and all meals. $375 includes tuition and meals only.
Participants may purchase a thirty-minute Private Consultation with their instructor for $150. Manuscripts (15 pages maximum) must be sent in advance; portfolios can be but this is not required.
Limited Scholarships, based on need, are available.
Millay Colony Alumni receive a 15% discount.
Weekend Workshop Schedule: We will begin each four-hour class at 10:00 with coffee, tea and a lot of ideas about a lively, focused, smart writing and art practice. Total workhop time is eight hours or sixteen hours for a double class. Lunch is served at each class and the day ends at 3:00 PM.
Weekend Fees: $250 for a weekend class, $400 for a two-weekend class.
Limited Scholarships, based on need, are available.
Millay Colony Alumni receive a 15% discount.
To Apply: Send a letter of introduction indicating your choice of workshop and including a brief biography with a $100 deposit for Retreats and $50 for Weekends.. Also include a work sample (10 pages of writing, 10 images on CD or a brief video clip -- links to online work are also fine). Applicants will be accepted on a first-come first-serve basis. Please indicate if you require lodging and studio space for the Retreats.
Apply to: The Millay Colony for the Arts, 454 East Hill Road, Austerlitz, NY. Attention: Summer Retreats. Make Checks payable to The Millay Colony for the Arts.
For more information please get in touch with Caroline Crumpacker at 518-392-4144 or
.