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Sunday Aug 9 to Aug 23 // 2:30-4:00 p.m.
Forty years ago, Bob Ross guided painters on a PBS TV series called The Joy of Painting. He believed everyone had inherent artistic talent and famously said, “We don’t make mistakes; we just have happy accidents.” Like Bob, I invite you to discover writing as an act of generation and new approaches to writing. We will experiment and play with language using a variety of prompts. We will focus on creating language in images and sentences that you can use in poems or other genres, and we will explore the “happy trees” in poems by Houston-based poets. Come play on Saturday afternoons in August! Each session will be 90 minutes long, broken into two 40-minute sessions with a ten-minute break. If you are interested in sharing your writing with the group and/or me, there will be opportunities to do so. You are welcome to attend one, two, or three sessions.
In 1992, Rebecca Danelly Oxley, recently discharged from the Air Force, encountered Houston poetry at an open mic downtown. In the following years, she met and worked with Tamara Nicholl-Smith, Marcell Murphy, and Bucky Rea, among many other Houston poets, who guided her, not just in poetry, but in how to be human. After attending the University of Houston and years of working and raising children, she attended workshops at Grackle and Grackle. In 2023, she received an MFA in poetry from Texas State University. She has work forthcoming at Blood Orange Review, and her poems have been published in Grist, equinox, Kestrel, Whale Road Review, and Zócalo Public Square, among other journals and anthologies. She resides on unceded Akokisa, Atakapa, Karankawa, and Sana land with her partner, Jeremy, and her dog friend, Professor Daisy, and teaches First Year Composition at the University of Houston–Downtown.
GRACKLE ART BY: Sergio Pérez Corella
Sunday Aug 9 to Aug 23 // 2:30-4:00 p.m.
Forty years ago, Bob Ross guided painters on a PBS TV series called The Joy of Painting. He believed everyone had inherent artistic talent and famously said, “We don’t make mistakes; we just have happy accidents.” Like Bob, I invite you to discover writing as an act of generation and new approaches to writing. We will experiment and play with language using a variety of prompts. We will focus on creating language in images and sentences that you can use in poems or other genres, and we will explore the “happy trees” in poems by Houston-based poets. Come play on Saturday afternoons in August! Each session will be 90 minutes long, broken into two 40-minute sessions with a ten-minute break. If you are interested in sharing your writing with the group and/or me, there will be opportunities to do so. You are welcome to attend one, two, or three sessions.
In 1992, Rebecca Danelly Oxley, recently discharged from the Air Force, encountered Houston poetry at an open mic downtown. In the following years, she met and worked with Tamara Nicholl-Smith, Marcell Murphy, and Bucky Rea, among many other Houston poets, who guided her, not just in poetry, but in how to be human. After attending the University of Houston and years of working and raising children, she attended workshops at Grackle and Grackle. In 2023, she received an MFA in poetry from Texas State University. She has work forthcoming at Blood Orange Review, and her poems have been published in Grist, equinox, Kestrel, Whale Road Review, and Zócalo Public Square, among other journals and anthologies. She resides on unceded Akokisa, Atakapa, Karankawa, and Sana land with her partner, Jeremy, and her dog friend, Professor Daisy, and teaches First Year Composition at the University of Houston–Downtown.
GRACKLE ART BY: Sergio Pérez Corella