Making Poetry Fun

Chilmark poet John Maloney will hold a poetry workshop at the Chilmark Public Library starting on Wednesday, May 4 at 5:30 p.m. This four-part series will continue on May 11, June 1 and June 8. You may attend as many as you wish.

Using whatever presents itself (puns, jokes, overheard remarks), participants will reel off poems at an alarming rate, without trying to educate, explore Big Ideas, or explain the world, but instead will write to bring small moments of relief in forms (no sestinas, no rondels), that reveal themselves in the writing, slinging words for no reason at all, for fun.

There will be a J.D. Salinger night, an Elizabeth Bishop vs. James Dickey looking at a painting night; there will be a slow food night, and an exaggerated warning label night. Sessions will highlight the unattributed reading of the poems, discussion and mutual enjoyment.

John Maloney’s books are Proposal and Town of Chilmark. He has published poems in Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Ploughshares, Boston Book Review, The New York Times Op-Ed Page, Zoland Poetry Annual, and has two poems in The Book of Irish American Poetry, From the Eighteenth Century to the Present.

The workshop is free and sponsored by the Friends of the Chilmark Public Library. For more information, call 508-645-3360.