Empowering Your Voice Through Multimedia Erasure: A Workshop with Biographer and Poet, Iris Jamahl Dunkle
Empowering Your Voice Through Multimedia Erasure: A Workshop with Biographer and Poet, Iris Jamahl Dunkle
4 hour workshop | Cost: $135 +$20 material fee payable at time of workshop | Limited to 10 students
*Partial scholarships available, for more info click HERE Please apply 30 days prior to date requested.
In my biography, Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb I call to attention the fact that John Steinbeck appropriated material from the author Sanora Babb. While writing this biography, I couldn't help but think about my grandmother's experience migrating to California from Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl and how much she disliked how Steinbeck had depicted her story and the story of those around her. In addition to this, I felt trepidation about taking on a respected writer like John Steinbeck. So, one day, I picked up a copy of The Grapes of Wrath and started to talk back to it in the form of erasure. This act of erasure became a form of empowerment: a way to reclaim not only Babb’s story but also the story of my grandmother and my family.
How did the erasure work? As a process, I would systematically go through chapters in Steinbeck’s book and circle single letters or full words that became the main poems found in my erasure, and afterward, I erased the rest of Steinbeck’s words using pen, acrylic paint, photo transfer, embroidery, gold leaf, and multiple other techniques. What I created through this process was not only a manuscript of poems but also an art object.
Join me in this hands-on workshop where I will empower you to erase something or someone that has power over you through the art of erasure.
What you need to bring: a book or document you want to interact with. Make sure this is a book that you feel strongly about!
Sunday, February 23 10am-2pm
INSTRUCTOR
Iris Jamahl Dunkle's poetry and nonfiction critically engage with the Western myth of progress by exploring the profound impact of agriculture and overpopulation on the North American West, both historically and in contemporary times.
She is the author of two biographies, Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer (University of Oklahoma Press, 2020) and Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb (University of California Press, 2024), and four collections of poetry, including West : Fire : Archive, published by The Center for Literary Publishing, Interrupted Geographies and Gold Passage by Trio House Press and There’s a Ghost in This Machine of Air by Word Tech. She was the 2017-18 Poet Laureate of Sonoma County.