Residencies
Every semester in the MFA program begins with a 10-day residency at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon, or at a designated off-campus location such as Seaside, Oregon.
Residencies feature readings, workshops, panels and lectures by award-winning authors of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Residencies are scheduled twice a year in June and January.
Now enrolling for the semester beginning January 2009. The residency will be held in Seaside, Oregon, from January 8-18.
What students are saying
- "This residency was not about meeting my expectations; it was about setting goals
and then, when I least expected it, blowing them apart. For me this was an amazing process
and I am grateful."
- "I felt honored to be among such talent. I felt even more honored to have been
selected as a student in the program after witnessing the talent of our students during
the reading on Wednesday night."
- "The workshops made me reconsider my own craft and my eagerness to offer my opinions
of another writer's work…I allowed myself to dig into the content and matter more thoroughly
and discovered more possibilities for diversity in my own work."
- "Being here has brought back the thirst for literary writing, a thirst for writing
that is carefully crafted in content and structure."
- "This residency was both intellectually and spiritually gratifying, and also mentally and physically exhausting. But the exhaustion is almost like a war badge, a sign that I have completed and started an honorable path: a path of creation, discovery, and community."
Student commentaries on residency craft talks, January 2008
By Nancy Hechinger (Poetry, 2009)
Title: The NEW New York School: The Children of Frank O'Hara
This craft talk was like recess, like lunch, like a story hour—full of energy, the best time of the day. Dorianne opened by inviting us to “take into our hearts some antic joy.” First she gave a short overview of the New New York School, and the poets influenced by Frank O'Hara, (who included Ashberry, Koch, R.D. Skilling, James Tate, Tony Hoagland, Charles Simic) and then she just read to us. “I love reading him. I love being in Frank’s voice.” No one wrote like this before. She read Personism, a fantastic wild ride of a silly rant with a serious message—but you never get a"‘here-comes- the-message" message. It’s like a train coming at you, all conversation. It begins with silliness and moves to deep seriousness. Look at the poem "A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island." O'Hara begins with something absurd and moves to something serious. The sun grows in stature and believability as an authority figure. But without the silliness, the seriousness would not hold; it would be too much. It would be heavy, didactic. The main thing with Dorianne is this: She loves poetry so much, she whoops, she flies—she loves to read it, swim in it, and the energy of O’Hara’s work jazzes her no end…and passion like that is 100% contagious. Her parting words: “Don’t take yourself too seriously and live as variously as possible.”
By Cathryn Braeback (Poetry, 2010)
Title: Nocturnes and Aubades
Poet Sandra Alcosser urged her auditors to ask themselves, “What is my hymn to the night?” She described night as the time we are alone, when the soul comes out. I find myself considering how close this remark is to Edward Hirsch’s simple suggestion (in How to Read a Poem) for relating fully to a poem: read it alone, at night or in the early morning. Accompanied by a nocturne by Impressionist composer Claude Debussy and paintings by Monet and Whistler, Sandra firmly fixed the poetry of night to the late 19th and early 20th centuries in a recognized place in Western tradition. She also took this tradition back in time to the Orphic hymns of the Greeks. Sandra’s talk emphasized the universality of the aubade, the dawn poem of lovers, and the nocturne. Aubades were written by female court poets of 10th century Japan like Sei Shonagan and Ono no Komachi, as well as by the troubadours of 12th century France. I was struck by this reminder that the lyric tradition did not start with the Romantics and wonder how I, with a background in the medieval lyric, can incorporate some echoes of other times and places into my work. Poets and fiction writers still produce celebrations of night or morning, as contemporary poet Jenny Lewis has done, or turn the tradition upside down in the manner of Philip Larkin. I was startled to find two examples in Sylvia Plath’s Ariel the day of the craft talk.
By James Zerndt (Fiction, 2009)
Title: Globalized Narrative
Wow. That pretty much sums up how I felt about Xu’s reading and craft talk. It was a shot of youthful adrenaline at just the right time in the residency. Her story "To Body, To Chicken" was both a humorous tale about the importance of the English language and the difficulty others have in learning it. “Teacher says water is a concrete noun. She wonders about this because of water’s liquid nature.”
This segued nicely into her talk about how literature is taught in English around the world and how MFA programs are a phenomenon occurring mainly in the United States. Even Thai authors writing about Thailand are writing in English. English has become the standard for literature. Xu Xi didn’t so much go into the implications of this, but rather seemed more interested in making us aware of it as writers.
She asked us how we derive meaning in contemporary fiction when the world is becoming so globalized. What is the universal when there’s a McDonalds along the Seine in Paris? A Taco Bell in Seoul? Almost anything seems to go these days. The word ‘sushi’ was almost unknown to American readers thirty years ago, but due to an increasing Asian population here, readers are now familiar with it. Because of this, Xu Xi intimates that it might be time for us to re-think universals in our writing. And I don’t think that’s such a bad thing. It might, actually, be an opportunity.
By Aaron Kier (Fiction, 2010)
Title: Writing Mom
After Ellen Bass gave her talk about discovery, everyone buzzed about it for days. Faculty reiterated points in workshop, Craft Talks, over lunch; we chatted about it, looked at our work (and our lives and budding pieces of inspiration) through this new lens to see how the kaleidoscope’s colors might alter our perceptions, each chink’s shift a new possibility. But not until John Rember finally took the podium on Tuesday afternoon did we see this concept at work in the hands of a gifted craftsman.
Laced throughout John’s talk, lines rose to the surface and, without apparent intention, underscored Ellen’s concept. Saying, “The writer goes into the underworld without dying,” he cautioned: “You can’t do it by approaching stories you already know the ending to.” His comments and the poignant literary illustrations about mothers—drawn from sources as divergent as Hansel & Gretel to Persephone and Hades—drew broad strokes across the canvas. Metaphor and concepts, such as “the psychosis of normalcy” and a view of medical clinics as metaphor for the psyche, darkened the shadows. And in the center of this masterpiece he placed the glaring, hard-to-look-at portrait of his own relationship with his aging mother.
John may have opened his talk by lobbing to the listener the idea of writing as either expiation or witnessing, but his talk defied being neatly categorized under either heading. “Writers should learn to love messiness,” he told us. And he stood in the middle of that messiness, wallowed in it without concern that he did so in front of an audience. He laid out the difficult story of his mother’s deteriorating condition and his own anger, frustration and fear—not because he’s transcended those feelings and can place them in some neat little box and offer it up as proof of his atonement, but because he is still clawing his way through to the underworld in an effort to discover what it is he is meant to learn from this experience. In so doing, he posed provocative questions and thoughts. “What’s so bad about grief anyway?” “Nobody believes in nothing.” In reference to Hansel & Gretel bearing a theme of hunger and want: “Where does it come from in the midst of plenty?” And ultimately, his truly transcendent viewpoint of motherhood as a variation of Stockholm Syndrome—that the mother’s life, dreams, independence, identity, etc. have been “hijacked by her child.”
Wild stuff. I’ll be processing for some time. And hopefully, embarking on an illuminating journey of my own as a result.
By Robbie Pock (Fiction, 2010)
Title: The Secret of Once
So you’re writing along and the narrative is just getting soggy and slow and you’d give three stars off a Kirkus review just to find the one thing that would save you. If you had Mary Helen Stefaniak on speed dial, she could gift you the secret of once. A little mini-scene can rescue the plot, lighten the narrative, take the characters in a fresh, provocative direction. Like every other writer in the audience, I listened to Mary Helen’s lecture with an enlightened smile. Now I had a tool I could use to slip in a little backstory, drop in that brilliant detail to foreshadow a climactic moment. Since that lecture, I heard over and over again the students in the program saying, “You need to use the secret of once.” “You could drop a mini-scene here.” How wonderful when a teacher can show you something you’ve been doing all along and teach you how to use it to maximum effect. Thank you, Mary Helen.
By Helen Gerhardt (Poetry, 2010)
Title: Poetry A to Z
Marvin Bell delivered a high energy talk on, well, everything in poetry, from A to Z. My head was filled with cold medicine, so I was already a little dizzy, and Marvin came in with this talk that ran like a 100 meter dash on steroids. Mostly, I couldn’t keep up with him. However, I did manage to capture a few bits of truly wonderful treasure as he raced past me. Good thing for me he is generous with what he knows, and keeps it in all in big, loose pockets that tend to allow things to spill out.As he traveled through the alphabet, one of his E’s (and there were more than one) was for Elegies. Marvin asked, “Who are they for?” He continued with the answer, saying, “An elegy is a poem that was written too late.” He asserted, “In place of elegies, write more love poems!” This one got my attention, despite the antihistamine cloud surrounding my thinking. An elegy is a poem that was written too late. I had become aware that almost half of my recently completed poems were to people who were dead. Not that there’s anything wrong with writing to dead people, per se. It’s just a little lonely, because it is difficult for them to respond in a satisfying manner. It might also be a little cowardly, because the dead folk can’t answer you in an unsatisfying manner, either. At least, this has been my experience. I have begun to realize that I might be missing some of the very interesting and alive people who are currently part of my life, which is what Marvin was trying to point out, I think.
Let me make a promise based on a lot of what Marvin had to say: Marvin Bell, on my honor I will try to do my duty to God and my country and write more love poems, but I reserve the right to do this badly. I will mess with lines. I will give a damn. I will read my poetry with disregard for its meaning. I will not be myself. I will not write what I know. I will trust my senses. I will write love poems while the ones I love are alive. I will give it a try. I will fear no meter. I will remember that music arises within the body of the writer and the music always wins. Even scientists have their imperfect name for something that is as big as it can get, and they call it “the end of greatness.” I will write about that dark matter, that scientific sticky stuff of the universe, and I will do it with great love, and I will do it badly, to the best of my ability, again and again. You told me so. I promise. And thank you.
By Abby Murray (Poetry, 2009)
Title: The Ground Beneath Their Feet
Molly opened the topic of locating your writing, of landscape descriptions and how to handle them in a society spoiled by media. She essentially reminded us we’re not writing for the 18th or 19th century public—a patient crowd that absorbed lengthy, luxurious landscape descriptions because it was still new, still fresh and unseen. Then, it was the writer’s job to bring the land to the reader. Today, we write for readers who have (typically) seen fields, meadows and forests. They’ve heard the crawl of traffic in busy cities, and are no longer as patient as their ancestors with drawn-out landscape descriptions. For example, novels like those of Jane Austen’s were able to go in-depth on the “exterior” part of a story: where the characters were located, during which season, witnessing what kind of agricultural development, etc. Instead, readers today enjoy books more focused on the “interior” aspects of a story: what is happening in the minds and relationships of the characters.
But we can (and should) still realize the importance of landscape. In her handout, Molly cited examples from novels with authors as contemporary as Ann Patchett and Kent Haruf, highlighting their ability to make location clear and distinct, able to express not only a place, but also mood and metaphorical meaning. As a poet, I was glad to have been there. This craft talk elaborated on Ellen’s Discovery lecture and the significance of locating a poem. Molly gave us so many different perspectives to learn from -- one example being John Gardner’s quote: “The rain must be real for readers to understand the girl’s anger at her umbrella being stolen.” This made me want to take another look at my poems and see if I could tell what the weather was like in each of them! Was the emotion of each of my poems supported by what was physically there? Is each poem grounded somewhere?
During the talk, I looked over at my friend Adrianna, a fiction writer working on a “cross-genre” fantasy novel. Molly addressed that type of writing as well, telling us that if you’re making up your own world, you must address the landscape and “how” of it: How does it rain? How do plants and food grow? Where is waste kept? Non-fiction writers, I felt, had a place there too. “Where we come from informs where we go,” Molly said. We were all advised to remember the landscapes of our homes, our childhoods. Make maps. Examine the plant life. Then put it in writing and use it as the foundation of an entire piece.
Student commentaries on residency craft talks, June 2007
By Catherine Michaud (Poetry, 2009)
Title: Fundamentals of Nonfiction
By Laura Hirschfield (Poetry, 2009)
Title: The Writer and the Republic
Lyric |
Bardic |
Individual, personal |
Collective, societal |
Inner |
Outer |
Private |
Public |
Figurative |
Stripped |
Obtuse |
Plain |
Examples: Mallarme Rimbaud Finnegan’s Wake |
Examples: Brecht Neruda (during and after war) Milosz |
By Jon Anderson (Nonfiction, 2009)
- Conflict, tension, trouble?
- A mystery, a question, a surprise?
- Sex, work, or humor?
- A compelling voice?
- A specific object of focus?
- A sense of place?
By John Allen (Fiction, 2008)
Title: Enkidu Died, Gilgamesh Cried: Love and Grief as the Writer’s Best Friends
We need the shock of the new and the shock of recognition. Shock of the new: shows how new things can be, shows the vastness and creative potential of the universe. The shock of recognition: shows what has been forgotten, what was shipwrecked. The writer’s job is to unbury that which has been so carefully buried. A story will never achieve the power you want it to have unless you cut most of it. Ego takes the form of the narrative voice, makes the underworld accessible—and as you ascend from the depths, your mind is expanded. It is better to write as a whole person than as a half person. But becoming a whole person is hard in our culture. We don’t know what an authentic man or an authentic woman is anymore. When you write and rewrite a story, you get a sense of what it wants to become. We need to develop and experience deep and worshipful grief.
By Linda Weiford (Nonfiction, 2009)
Title: Improvisation – Prose, Poetry & Jazz
This was a highlight of my residency experience. The class had a beatnik feel to it. The only thing missing was my black turtleneck. Listening to Bell spew lines of poetry off the top of his head as Moore played the string bass was stirring, impressive. It taught me about reading and writing with rhythm. And what a delight to watch students read as Moore played his 300-year-old string instrument. When Moore plucked the strings with his fingers, it sounded like spiders scurrying up a metal rain gutter. The student readings took on a new sound, one of exploration and truth-or-dare. Meanwhile, Bell sat on a table behind the podium, swaying to the music. Had he been 30 pounds heavier, he could have been Jerry Garcia.
During class, I read the closest thing to poetry I’ve ever produced, “On-air Stripper.” It actually felt good to break out of the tight confinements of journalism. I really had fun.
Bell is right: “Poetry is much more than heightened speech.”
By John Gorman (Fiction, 2008)
Title: Sex. How Far Do We Go and Will You Still Respect Me After the Story
with great art works. The depictions are startling since many of them are essentially the same poses, but rendered differently. The common denominator in all of them is what is left to the imagination. Beneath the cover, the stories themselves share the same dichotomy. Romance novels err in being too explicit not allowing the imagination to sort through its mystery bag of unconscious thoughts. The strongest love scenes allow the reader to draw his own implications. The same could be said for any topic, not only love. The temptation to sensationalize love scenes is great even for seasoned writers, but the masters can probe forbidden boundaries and espouse deep emotions and great resonance. Nabokov did this in “Lolita.” He took a deplorable character, a despicable situation, and made it poignant by diverting the attention from the carnal lust and focused on the poetry of language and the quivering emotions of its narrator. A lesser author would have fallen pitifully short.
Embedding sexuality beneath the surface as in the paintings of Klimt makes for the most interesting sexual writing. Tension and texture far outweighs the surface banality that is so pervasive in modern writing.
By George Wallace (Poetry, 2008)
In this student presentation Bonsi argues convincingly and with analytical acumen the notion that the intuitive process which leads poets to the collective unconscious through Visionary Poetry can serve to save American culture from the constraints of capitalism. He describes Psychological Poetry, which is based in the conscious and personal subconscious, is agenda-based, and is in the same ‘realm’ as the instruments of consumer distraction, which lead to a spiritually empty existence. By contrast, explains Bonsi, Visionary Poetry fulfills Carl Jung’s belief that opening up to the collective unconscious counterbalances the pressures of capitalist society, and has the power ‘to bring excessive and repressive states into equilibrium.’ In Psychological Poetry, as in capitalist society, ‘The code for sex is violence. The code for beer is gun. The code for mother is paranoia. The code for love is false expectations.’ Visionary Poetry, on the other hand, does not ‘tweak’ code meanings of the subconscious. Instead, it reaches to communally held archetypes for its power. He illustrates his point with a statement by Li Young Li: how he hears the hum beneath language; and how words like birds come, one by one like birds to sit on the wire. Other illustrations from Gary Snyder, William Blake, Dorianne Laux and Charles Bukowski demonstrate the power of the Visionary Poetry process. A top notch presentation and thesis which should be distributed widely.
By Alissa Nielsen (Fiction, 2008)
Title: The Voices in Our Heads