“The horror! The horror!”: That Monster is a Thing and That Thing is Me

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Instructors: Shanta Lee

Schedule:
Sept 4th, 11:30-2:30pm EST
Sept 11th, 11:30-2:30pm EST
Sept 18th, 11:30-2:30pm EST
Sept 25th, 11:30-2:30pm EST
Virtual

$225.00

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“The horror! The horror!”: That Monster is a Thing and That Thing is Me

This workshop includes 4 sessions.

Across our culture, monsters have taken on every form that ranges from the stories we have told and retold about the figure of the vampire to a range of stories that are unique to different regions of our country (for example, the boo hag — a witch who could slip out of her human skin — is specific to Gullah culture in the south). Within literature, the figure of the monster circles the globe from what resides within a range of holy traditions to old stories like the Chinese tale of “The Painted Skin.”

Given that we are the tellers of the tale, the monster is a part of our psyche. And alongside this legacy of the tales of the monster have been moments of history raising the question of who is the real monster? The creatures we have created on screen, on figures that appear on the page, or the reflection staring back at us? We can point to everything from the phenomenon of witch trials around the globe through history to the stories that continue to fill headlines about what humans are doing to other humans. Of course the most obvious monsters we can point to reside in the constant resurfacing of the serial killer in ways that invite us to explore who and why they are. The who within this inquiry of the figure of the monster is being reflected in shows like the Hulu series Monsterland and Jordan Peele’s film, Us, to name a few examples.

In both of those examples, human behavior and the ways we try to hide the monstrous or dark parts of ourselves is presented in a way that erodes the line of the other when it comes to scary creatures thus making it clear that the monster resides within us. Specific to these examples, and many others, ourselves as the scary creature is reflected in the way that is uttered in the last lines of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness by the main character, Kurtz screaming out, The horror! The horror!”

What can we explore within our psyche, lived experiences, or what we have taken in that will cause us to scream our own version of these lines on the page?

This workshop will explore ways we can uncover the grotesque, the scary, the horrid and wretched when it comes to exploring who or what is the monster on the page in verse and prose. Over the next several weeks in September, we are going to look at the ways that the monster has been fashioned and created within snippets of podcasts based on true events, on screen and on the page as we create our own.

This is an invitation to erode the line between the monster that is separate from the monster that is the human. You have been warned. Come prepared to monster with us!

Shanta Lee

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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“The horror! The horror!”: That Monster is a Thing and That Thing is Me

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