Sat, Aug 24
|Woodland Pattern
Interiors: Songs of Social Disruption, Isolation, and Interior Spaces
Free poetry writing workshop on the theme in the title; poems produced will be performed to music by Starwound music ensemble. Limited enrollment.
Time & Location
Aug 24, 2024, 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM CDT
Woodland Pattern, 720 E Locust St, Milwaukee, WI 53212, USA
About the event
Enrollment Limited to Seven Participants: Register at Woodland Pattern: 414-263-5001
The recent COVID pandemic, with its long quarantines and repeated lockdowns, led to prolonged periods of isolation, thus creating major social disruptions. People were forced to stay behind closed doors and maintain personal contact mainly through computers and cellphones. We frequently heard stories of psychological and emotional distress, such as increased depression and anxiety, as well as domestic violence and prolonged forays into social media. For some, the isolation also created opportunities for profound reflection. A project created by Starwound, an alternative Anglophone band based in Athens, Greece, invites poets to interpret their own experiences based on the theme of “interiors” in poems that will be accompanied by music.
This workshop has three components:
1. Local poet and Professor Emerita of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Creative Writing Program, Brenda Cárdenas will lead participants in a generative workshop that involves reading and discussing contemporary poems that touch upon the theme of interiors; generating a pertinent, shared vocabulary from which any participant can draw; and writing in response to prompts that help participants interpret the theme in various ways and access memories associated with the theme. The goal is for each participant to leave the workshop with a completed first draft of a single poem.
2. Participants who wish to revise their poems will have two weeks to do so and may choose to send them to Cárdenas for her constructive feedback. Cárdenas will send final drafts of the poems to Starwound by mid-September.
3. In October, Starwound will perform concerts in six U.S. cities, including Milwaukee, to present new songs created in collaboration with prominent poetry professors, university students, and poets of the local communities. Starwound’s appearance in Milwaukee on October 23 will be held at Woodland Pattern where the group will premiere new songs created with the poetry professors, including Cárdenas, and provide musical accompaniment to original poetic compositions created and recited live by this workshop’s participants. Earlier in the day, Starwound will hold a one-hour rehearsal with participants.
Starwound is a trio consisting of Konstantina Stavropoulou (vocals, synthesizer), Petros Bouras (piano, synthesizer), and Dimitris Azorakos (drums). Their music fuses a cabaret ambience with elements of EDM and synth rock genres. They have released three albums: Miles to Walk (2015), So Wrong (2018) and What Do you See? (2024); have participated in many music festivals such as Eurosonic (Netherlands), CLAE Festival (Luxembourg), Colora (Belgium), Culturescapes (Switzerland), "River Party” and “Aisxyleia” (Greece); and have given concerts in Switzerland, UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, North Macedonia and Luxembourg. In 2023, they premiered the first iteration of their “Interiors” project at a number of U.S. universities.
Links to Starwound songs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Spb-CqZxFA