Trans and Genderqueer Poetry Symposium

Samuel Ace

Biography

Samuel Ace is the author of three collections of poetry: Normal Sex (Firebrand Books), Home in three days. Don’t wash., a hybrid project of poetry, video and photography (Hard Press), and most recently Stealth, co-authored with Maureen Seaton (Chax Press). He is a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts grant, two-time finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in Poetry, winner of the Astraea Lesbian Writer’s Fund Prize in Poetry, The Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction, the Firecracker Alternative Book Award in poetry. He was also a 2012 finalist for the National Poetry Series. His work has been widely anthologized and has appeared in or is forthcoming from, Ploughshares, Eoagh, Spiral Orb, Kenyon Review, van Gogh’s Ear, Rhino, 3:am, Trickhouse, Everyday Genius, and others. He lives in Tucson, AZ and Truth or Consequences, NM.

 

Workshop Description

Friday, May 10 3:30-5: some of the glories sigh for prophets* (excavating false grammars and unnatural borders) - an ekphrastic journey

In this workshop we will use images to reveal how we adopt the language of gender through what we write, how we tell our stories, how we structure our language, and ultimately how we see. Starting with pronouns, and the assumption that our learned grammars may be imperfect vehicles, we will uncover and identify false grammars and unnatural borders, excavate predictable grammars and self-imposed borders, explode fearful grammars, structures and deeply etched, habitual pathways. We may even lay bare seemingly useful grammars, lovely masks and friendly ghosts, to reveal new seeings, and as yet unknown vistas of language and self.

*from Bharat jiva by kari edwards