As writers, we draw from our imaginations, but where do our imaginations draw from? The answer is both simple and complex: writers’ imaginations grow out of what we see, experience, and remember. This workshop will explore how source material, particularly the rich artistic and historic roots of Provincetown and Cape Cod, can feed our writing.

Whether you are interested in visual art, genealogy, local history, or more recent events in your own life, this workshop is designed to help you mine the source facts of your life for creative material. Beginning with images and texts from the PAAM collection, the Provincetown Historical Association, and local galleries and historic sites—or from materials you bring to class—we will experiment with the active process of culling from life’s compost heap. Using specific writing exercises, we will develop pieces that give history and art the immediacy of our written imaginations.

This class is cross-genre; students interested in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and memoir will all find this process productive.

Suggested pre-class readings:
Poetry: Lucie Brock-Broido, The Master Letters
Nonfiction/Memoir: Mark Doty, Still Life with Oysters and Lemon
Fiction: Michael Ondaatje, Coming Through Slaughter
Memoir/Poetry: Eleni Sikelianos, The California Poem

BEFORE PLIMOTH

When we land, we are America.
I walk from the water braced
against a vision
of milk-fed families in formal wear,
tux cuffs rolled up in the surf. Magnums
and baby blue jewelry boxes sparkle
in the sounds of sunset. Come summer,
tourists worry about seals on the sand.
Travel only on designated pathways.
It is for Nature's sake we segregate.
Don't try too hard to tune in. There are trawlers.
The airport. Highway hum. There is a lighthouse
somewhere in this poem. Do you need further aid
to navigation? The Big Dipper's pouring-side
always points toward Polaris: we are now
looking north. Parallax cannot be proven
as anything more than our perception,
yet Columbus managed to not discover America.
Some say it was Whitman did. Some say,
Siberian Snow Wolf. Some say discover
ten times fast and then find it: a trick word,
probably best read in translation
by the non-native speaker. There's something
inherently cheesy about Cape Cod.
I wait on the bike path red-faced, breathing
and defeated as my dog drinks
from the First Pilgrim Spring. Imagine me
with a British accent, by way of Amsterdam,
fairly international yet displeased
with the spiritual state of the world.
Imagine me puking over the gunwales and glad
to have this test from God, seeing this strange
desert thrust a scythe into saltwater storms.
Perfect place for Puritans with no knack for farming.
Imagine me burning a witch, or tarred & feathered,
smirking, for The Offence of Writing Satanic Verse.
Imagine me, Park Ranger, writing tickets
for titties gone naked as savages.

– Robert Strong

 

Robert Strong was a Mellon research fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society, where his work with the Puritan conversion narrative resulted in a book of poetry, Puritan Spectacle (Elixir Press 2006). He is currently working on an anthology of American spiritual poetry for Autumn House Press and regularly reviews literature and art for Provincetown Arts and Boston Review. Robert is an assistant professor of English at SUNY Canton, north of the Adirondack wilderness.