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Date: Tuesday, February 3 Time: 6-8pm (Pacific Coast Time) Format: Zoom Ages: Adult Class Description: Can a poem move like a camera? This generative workshop explores how cinematic techniques—especially the close-up and the long shot—can help poets create imagery that feels vivid, dynamic, and emotionally charged. By adopting a director’s eye, we’ll consider how visual framing, movement, and perspective shifts can guide the reader’s gaze and enact emotional turns within the poem. We’ll start by watching brief clips from films such as THE SEARCHERS and MEMENTO to see how visual choices shape meaning. Then we’ll move in on the work of writers such as Oscar Wilde, Emily Dickinson, W. G. Sebald, Derrick Austin, and Jenny Xie—poets and prose writers whose images balance intimacy and distance, stillness and motion. Through close reading and writing prompts, you’ll experiment with how to make imagery feel three-dimensional while thinking through the differences between literary and visual representation. LEFT MARGIN LIT'S CANCELLATION/REFUND POLICY: If you find that you can't take a class for which you registered, you may request a refund, less a $25 administrative fee, at least 48 hours prior to the start of the first class session. After that threshold, refunds are not possible. If a class doesn't reach its minimum enrollment, it will be cancelled, and all students will receive full refunds.
