Forms & Features Online with Jorrell Watkins

All are welcome to a poetry discussion and creative writing workshop, “In the Voice and in the Deep, Blues Poetry,” created and led by Jorrell Watkins.

In this session, we will study blues poetry through listening to music, reading lyrics/poems and writing our own blues. Our primary focus will be craft especially, on contemporary blues aesthetics and practice. Though, we will ground our work with a discussion about the historical context of “The Blues.”

Jorrell Watkins (he/him/his) hails from Richmond, VA. He is a 2020-21 Fulbright Japan Graduate Research Fellow, alum of Hampshire College and the University of Iowa, Writers’ Workshop. In 2019, Combined Efforts Theater Company produced his disability inclusive play, Meet us at the Horizon. His chapbook, If Only the Sharks Would Bite, won the inaugural Desert Pavilion Chapbook Series in Poetry. His full-length collection, Play|House shortlisted for the 2020 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. He collaborated with writers: Claretta Holsey, DJ Savarese, and Lateef Mcleod to publish, Studies in Brotherly Love (Prompt Press, 2021), a poetry chapbook based on Malcolm Corley’s paintings. Currently, he studies Enka, poetry, and Aikido in Kansai, Japan.

Registration is required; space is limited. To register, email [email protected] with the date and time of the session you would like to attend. This program is for adult participants, aged 18 and up.