Poet and activist Christine Leclerc at Antioch College

Vancouver-based poet and activist Christine Leclerc will read her new works and present a workshop on craft at Antioch College August 16 and 18. While the reading and workshop are free and open to the public, registration is required for the workshop, for which seating is limited to 12 participants.

Leclerc will read her poetry at 7:00 p.m., Thursday, August 16, in Olive Kettering Library. She will present the workshop “Energy, Collaboration, and Form,” from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m., Saturday, August 18, in McGregor Hall, Room 130. To register for the workshop, send an email to [email protected].

Leclerc is the author of Counterfeit (Capilano University Editions, 2008) and an editor of The Enpipe Line (Creekstone Press, 2012), 70,000+ km of poetry written in resistance to the Northern Gateway pipeline proposal. She studied creative writing at the University of British Columbia, and her poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in magazines and journals across North America. She has been known to direct community theater in corporate headquarters and board oil rigs at sea.

The three-hour poetry workshop will focus on energy, collaboration and form. Participants will discuss poetic engagement with energy issues and dissect the formal or structural elements of these poems. The shared vocabulary generated by this exercise equips participants with the ability to collaborate on a new poetic form or structure. The guided writing that caps off this workshop allows participants to explore the results of their collaboration.

The Writing Institute at Antioch College sponsors Leclerc’s visit to Yellow Springs. The institute supports Antioch College’s mission and Learning Outcomes by providing members of the College community with opportunities for focused study of the writing craft. In the last year, the institute has sponsored visits and workshops by poet Ann Filemyr (A Healer’s Diary, Sunstone Press, 2012), writer and artist Nikki McClure (To the Market, To the Market, Abrams Books, 2011), journalists Liz F. Kay and John-John Williams (The Baltimore Sun), local author and Wright State professor Jeffery Alan John (A Bird in Your Hand, Lucid Books, 2010), and National Book Award winner Jaimy Gordon (Lord of Misrule, McPherson, 2010), the latter co-sponsored with The Antioch Review.