Writing and Writing: Penning Your Poetry in a Unique Script with Cheryl Dyer

As calligraphers, we are accustomed to working with words. But often the words we use in our art pieces are not ones we’ve composed ourselves—rather, they are borrowed from other writers. Usually there is nothing wrong with this approach. But, as creatives, we do indeed have the option of drafting our own phrases, poems or prose. In this dual-topic workshop half of our class time will be focused on writing poetry and half on writing calligraphy. This class will be highly generative through the use of many helpful writing prompts. We will also discuss important ideas to consider when writing poems and as well as literary devices like enjambment, sound, rhythm and metaphor that can assist with meaning-making in our poetry. In the spirit of creating original wording, we will also develop our own historically rooted, yet highly-personalized Italic script variations with the intention of using them to pen our poetry. Poetry beginners welcome! Students need not have any writing experience to attend. However, it will be helpful for students to have at least a beginning-level working knowledge of a basic Italic hand.