The Woods Hole Public Library will welcome Derek Denckla, a long-time summer visitor to Woods Hole, and award-winning poet and professor of creative writing at Los Angeles Film School, for a two-day poetry workshop in July. The workshop is titled “Casting Your Lines in Sea Foam from Bolinas to Buzzards Bay” and will include an examination of the poets of Bolinas, California, as well as an opportunity for participants to write their own work. Denckla reflects, “We are in a moment of critical inflection in history during which I believe that we may benefit from seeking understanding how poets and artists responded to similar junctures in the past. In doing so, we may delve into how we too might respond with poetry and art right now. Contemplating an upcoming stay in Woods Hole, I recalled a time 50 years ago in this small seaside town in the 1970s which seemed full of social promise and upheaval. This memory made me think of another seaside town on the opposite Coast that was “run” by poets 50 years ago: Bolinas, California, a place strikingly parallel to a Woods Hole— poised on the tip of a long peninsula, Point Reyes, as Woods Hole is positioned at an edge of Cape Cod. These two places, opposite in coastal geography, arrived at opposite approaches to cultural transformation: Science and Art, which can be seen as different approaches to the same end: Understanding. And, perhaps, Truth.” In the first meeting on Tuesday, July 1, at 3:00pm, the group will read and discuss excerpts from the recently re-released and expanded book, “On the Mesa: An Anthology of Bolinas Writing” (Song Cave, 2021). In the second meeting on Tuesday, July 8, at 3:00pm, the group will use these writings as prompts to create their own work that they will read and discuss. Recommended for persons 17 and older. To participate and receive a link to the readings, please call the Woods Hole Library at 508-548-8961 or email whpl_mail@clamsnet.org to register.
