PreEmptive Strategies
A six week poetry workshop with Truong Tran
[SIX SESSIONS, Mondays 7-9pm] May 21, 28, June 4, 11, 18, 25] | Arc Gallery & Studios 1246 Folsom St. (btw 8th and 9th) SF (Near Civic Center BART) Tuition: $200 (early-bird before May 7) $250 (after May 7)
Message from the instructor: And just like that, the world changed. My nights became days and my days… I’m not sure what my days are made up of these days. It consists of looking out windows, doing dishes, being present in a virtual world. I am becoming more and more aware of the need for writing, art and making in my life. I believe that I arrive too late at the scene. I cannot undo what has been done, I can’t bring my friends and family back and I cannot render the experience in directness and in beauty. The artist Doris Salcedo said that to do so would be a perversion and I agree. Going back to the beginning, I made my first piece of art, I wrote my first poem in an attempt at making beauty. If that is not possible in this time, what is it then that I am trying to do? These lights and the writing that is born of them are not a rendering of the times. They are the markers for memories, that I might access such memories at a later date That this endeavor is a metaphor, a key, a way back. Join me in this six week exploration as we navigate through the work of writing during this time of isolation and strife. We will do this and we will do it together.
(KSW educational programming is focused primarily on writers and artists of color. Space is limited.)
About the Instuctor
Poet and visual artist Truong Tran was born in Saigon, Vietnam. He earned his MFA from San Francisco State University and is the author of five collections of poetry: The Book of Perceptions (1999), a finalist for a Kiriyama Prize; placing the accents (1999), a finalist for a Western States Book Award for Poetry; dust and conscience (2000), winner of a San Francisco State Poetry Center Prize; within the margin (2004); and four letter words (2008). He is also the author of the children’s book Going Home, Coming Home (2003).
Tran has described himself as primarily a visual artist whose “alter ego” is a poet. In an interview, Tran talks about how his visual art often remediates his poetry: “I reached a point in my writing life where I didn’t want to use words anymore. I didn’t trust language. So what I did was I went back to my four books of poetry to reconsider them in various ways, but without the additional creation of language. … With four letter words, which is my last book, I chose to reinterpret every poem in that book as a visual work, and that work is the lost and found.” The work, in which Tran uses found materials, often litter and trash, to create new objects and assemblages, is exhibited at the Mina Dresden Gallery in San Francisco. “My craft is founded in the doing,” Tran says of this work. “I glue things together. I make things fit. I dip things in wax. I cut. I build. I weave. I think.”
Tran is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including a Fund for Poetry grant, three San Francisco Arts Commission Cultural Equity grants, and an Intersection for the Arts Writer in Residency Fellowship. His visual art has been shown in Bay Area galleries such as Intersection, APAture, Kearny Street Workshop, and A. Muse Gallery. He is currently a visiting professor in poetry at Mills College.