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How do we craft verse to create a world of myth? In what ways can we take the myths or fairy tales that impacted our childhoods and engage them in our own re-making?
Whether we are talking about Robin Coste Lewis’s, Voyage of the Sable Venus, a work that creates a universe of seeing through an interrogation of very real museum/cultural archives – thousands of years old – of the Black body across time, or Helen Ivory’s Waiting for Bluebeard, a work that reshapes the well known tale about Bluebeard to navigate the complex terrain of gender, sexaulity and trauma, the world building and creating is evident within these verses. And within what I call my interpretation, interrogation and conversation with Ovid, my second book of poetry, Black Metamorphoses, co-exists within a long history of engagement with Ovidian and Greek mythology. I’ve also engaged in myth making for my ongoing multimedia work and exhibition, Dark Goddess.
Our engagement with and awareness of myth is intrinsic to our human identity and is woven into the work of everyone from Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés to Sharon Blackie to Joseph Campbell. If we use existing myths, how do we venture to interrogate, interpret and converse with it in a way that makes it our own as poets? What is a pathway to creating something new and mythic beyond what exists?
For all of those who either have always wanted to explore poetry or for those already working with verse, this generative workshop will:
– Explore and engage with major mythic themes from around the globe;
-Learn how to interpret, interrogate and converse with existing mythic with the creation of your own;
– Generate and revise work inspired by podcasts, short films, poetry and other prompts related to myths, legends and fairytales.
Come myth and make with us!
Shanta Lee is also the author of the poetry collection, GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA: Dreamin of Mama While Trying to Speak Woman in Woke Tongues, winner of the 2020 Diode Press full-length book prize and the 2021 Vermont Book Award. Within this latest illustrated poetry collection, Black Metamorphoses (Etruscan Press, 2023) is a work that Shanta Lee describes as a 2,000+ year-old phone line opened to Ovid, as well as an interrogation of the Greek mythos, while creating her own new language in this work. Black Metamorphoses has been named a finalist in the 2021 Hudson prize, shortlisted for the 2021 Cowles Poetry Book Prize and longlisted for the 2021 Idaho poetry prize. Shanta Lee is the 2020 recipient of the Arthur Williams Award for Meritorious Service to the Arts and the 2020 gubernatorial appointee to the Vermont Humanities Council’s board of directors. Her work within the humanities includes Shanta Lee giving lectures on the life of Lucy Terry Prince (c. 1730-1821) — considered the first known African-American poet in English literature — as a member of the Vermont and New Hampshire Humanities Council Speakers Bureaus. Shanta Lee also serves on the advisory for Jay Craven’s film, Lost Nation which prominently features the life of Lucy Terry Prince.
Shanta Lee’s professional wingspan covers the public health, arts, local government, non-profit and other sectors. Shanta Lee is a Vermont Public producer and reporter including her original series,“Seeing…the Unseen and In-Between within Vermont’s Landscape.” She is also a regular contributor to Ms. Magazine and Art New England. Her contributing work on several investigative journalism pieces for The Commons received a number of New England Newspaper & Press Association (NENPA) awards. Connected to Shanta Lee’s creative and professional practice is her collaborative work. Last July 2022 marked a special partnership with Epsilon Spires to co-create and co-create their first official multidisciplinary artist salon titled “Transcendence.” This salon series includes regional, national and international artists and is a collaboration that is continuing into 2023 and beyond.
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