Writer's Block Festival
November 16th, 2019
Poetry Is
LLA is excited to welcome Poetry Is, a writing and performance collective, to the Writer's Block Festival for the first time!
Poetry Is unites poets and musicians to forefront collaboration and improv for a unique and immersive "poetry reading" experience in which musicians co-create a live soundscape with the poet - no rehearsal required!
Poetry Is has developed a self-led ekphrastic workshop for all festival participants to enjoy. You can pick up the writing prompts at the Poetry Is exhibitor table, located in the Library Lounge on the Spalding University Library basement level. Complete the exercises while viewing student art in the adjoining Huff Art Gallery at your own pace. Bring your completed exercises back to the Poetry Is table by 1:30 PM, then enjoy how the poets and musicians of the Poetry Is collective bring your words to life in a collaborative, musical experience between 2:00 and 3:00 PM in the Huff Art Gallery.
Robert Eric Shoemaker is a poet-playwright, translator, educator, and theatre artist. Eric holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Poetics from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University and is a student in the PhD Humanities program at the University of Louisville. He has published two books, We Knew No Mortality (2018) and 30 Days Dry (2015). A third book of hybrid writing on Venice and climate change, Ca’Venezia, is due for publication in late 2019. Eric has featured scholarly work in Signs and Society; translations in Asymptote; Exchanges; The Adirondack Review; and Columbia Journal; poetry in Bombay Gin; The Gordian Review; Barely South Review; Verde Qué Te Quiero Verde; Kairos; and other journals; and essays in Mount Analogue; Roar; and other journals. Eric is the Poetry Editor for the journal Plath Profiles, Artistic Director of Poetry Is Productions, and serves as a member of the University of Chicago Arts Alumni Board and of the Sarabande Books Young Professionals Board. Follow his work at reshoemaker.com