Maker, Mentor, Muse & Alta Mesa Center for the Arts Presents

Moving Words, Speaking Gestures
led by Valerie Witte, Petra Kuppers & Sarah Rosenthal 
Sunday, September 15th - 12pm-2pm PDT
Zoom

How might poets work with words as kinetic objects, and with movement as language? Join us on Sunday, September 15th from 12pm-2pm PT for a reading, film screening, and generative writing salon led by poets Valerie Witte, Petra Kuppers, and Sarah Rosenthal will read from their recent poetry collections A Rupture in the Interiors (Airlie, 2023), Diver Beneath the Street (Wayne State U., 2024), and Estelle Meaning Star (Chax, 2024), all of which address embodiment in formally innovative ways. Petra and Sarah will screen short films that activate poetic language through gestures. There will be time for a Q&A followed by generative writing prompts inspired by the theme, with the opportunity for participants to free-write in response, leaving with new ideas and insights into making art that both speaks and moves.

Price for this salon is on a sliding scale: $15-$45. 

About Your Facilitators

Valerie Witte is the author of multiple poetry and hybrid books, including A Rupture in the Interiors (Airlie, 2023) and, in collaboration with Sarah Rosenthal, The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow, the first of a two-part project exploring the work of postmodern dancer-choreographers Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer. The second book in the project, a collection of experimental essays, is One Thing Follows Another, forthcoming in 2024 from punctum books. She edits education books in Portland, OR, and is also an editor at Airlie Press. More at valeriewitte.com.

Petra Kuppers (she/her) is a disability culture activist and a community performance artist. Petra grounds herself in disability culture methods, and she uses somatics, performance, media, and speculative writing to engage audiences toward more socially just and enjoyable futures. Her third performance poetry collection, Gut Botany (Wayne State University Press, 2020), was named one of the top ten US poetry books of 2020 by the New York Public Library and won the 2022 Creative Book Award by the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. Her fourth poetry collection, Diver Beneath the Street, investigates true crime and ecopoetry at the level of the soil (Wayne State University Press, 2024). She teaches at the University of Michigan, and she was a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow. www.petrakuppers.com

Sarah Rosenthal's most recent books are Estelle Meaning Star (Chax, 2024) and One Thing Follows Another: Experiments in Dance, Art, and Life Through the Lens of Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer (punctum, forthcoming 2024). Her collaborative film We Agree on the Sun won Best Experimental Short at the Berlin Independent Film Festival. She and her collaborators recently completed a second film, Lizard Song, based on her poetry collection Lizard. Rosenthal has received the Leo Litwak Fiction Award, a Creative Capacity Innovation Grant, a San Francisco Education Fund Grant, grant-supported writing residencies at This Will Take Time, Hambidge, New York Mills, Vermont Studio Center, Soul Mountain, and Ragdale, and a two-year Affiliate Artist term at Headlands Center for the Arts. More at sarahrosenthal.net.

Maker, Mentor, Muse is a teaching platform founded in 2022 by Mary Volmer, Maw Shein Win, and Dawn Angelicca Barcelona. Hailing from three distinct backgrounds, generations, and spiritual traditions we believe community is essential to building a satisfying and sustainable literary life and that true success requires balancing all three artistic roles: maker, mentor, muse. In collaboration with Alta Mesa Center for the Arts, sponsored by Orinda Community Church, we are building a place where artists embrace practices that honor process, spiritual growth, connection, and ongoing community with other writers.