Step Outside Yourself: Writing from Another Persona
with Jane Medved
Thursday, March 14, 2024 from 10:00 – 13:00
“It isn’t so much that geniuses make it look easy; it’s that they make it look fast.” –Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments
Our default writing position is usually first person – experience processed through the deeply felt “I”. But what if we change the lens, expand our boundaries, travel in time or space or matter to a different perspective – and enter the mind of the “other?”
In readings of both flash prose and poetry, we will examine how other writers have engaged with history, myth and legend through their writing. Readings will range from the traditional “persona” poem to the more daring lyric and experimental.
Through a series of guided writing exercises, we will practice stretching our own voices. What experience can we access through our own family histories, culture, religion or universal myths? Along the way, we will discover that even inanimate objects have an opinion.
This is a multi-genre workshop, combining poetry and lyric essay. Come prepared to step outside of yourself.
Details: 420nis if paid before March 1 and 480nis subsequently; non-refundable if you cancel within one week of the workshop and your place cannot be filled; includes light snacks and refreshments.
Jane Medved is the author of Deep Calls To Deep (winner of the Many Voices Project, New Rivers Press) and the chapbook Olam, Shana, Nefesh (Finishing Line Press) Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bending Genres, ONE ART: A Journal of Poetry, Literary Mama, Ruminate, The North American Review and The Contemporary Jewish Poetry Anthology (Greentower Press 2023). Her awards include winner of the 2021 RHINO translation prize and the 2021 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize – Honorable Mention. Her translations of Hebrew poetry can be seen in Hala, Cagibi, Hayden’s Ferry Review and Copper Nickel. She is the poetry editor of The Ilanot Review, and a visiting lecturer in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv.