“Where Souls Take Ease Amid the Blessed Groves”
A Poetry Workshop at the Villa Vergiliana with Excursions to Major Archeological Sites
Wednesday, July 5 – Friday, July 14, 2006

Overview
A workshop connecting poets and writers with their own creativity and with the art and history of the classical world. You need not be a practicing poet to enroll; the workshop sessions are designed to introduce beginners to the elements of poetry and help experienced poets to sharpen their skills. Excursions to Cumae, Baia, Naples, Herculaneum and Pompeii will provide inspiration and widen our imaginative horizons. Workshop sessions will include discussion of passages from Vergil’s Aeneid.

Participants must spend at least one night (more recommended), that of July 4, in Rome, in order to be able to meet up with the program Wednesday morning. The director will offer help with reservations in Rome.

The Villa
The Villa Vergiliana, a gracious villa with all the charm of a more elegant era, is located at the northwestern corner of the Bay of Naples. Only one-half hour from Naples itself, the villa is also near a number of outstanding archeological sites. Participants will enjoy superb authentic Italian cuisine as they find themselves relaxing into the leisurely pace of Villa life.

The Director
Sarah Getty is an award-winning poet, fiction writer and teacher of creative writing. She holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania. Her second book of poems, Bring Me Her Heart, will be published in March 2006 by Higganum Hill Books. Her first collection, The Land of Milk and Honey (University of South Carolina Press, James Dickey Contemporary American Poetry Series) won a Cambridge Poetry Award in 2002. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review and other leading literary magazines and in anthologies including Birds in the Hand, (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2004). Dr. Getty has published fiction in The Iowa Review and The Larcom Review; her short story “Forces” will appear in the anthology Still Going Strong (Haworth Press 2005). More information is on her Web site, www.sarahgetty.net.

Classicists Beverly Berg (Linfield College) and John Wonder (San Francisco State University) will lead the excursions to ancient sites.

The Program
Each workshop session is based on a section of Book VI of the Aeneid in Robert Fitzgerald’s translation (with additional examples from Book I). The sessions are designed to look at how intellect, imagination, senses, emotion, and artful language get into poetry. As a result, the program as a whole also makes connections between our own experience—as human beings and as poets—and the life and art of the ancient Mediterranean.

Daily schedule: 9:00 to 11:30 – Morning Workshop. 2:00 to 4:00 - Afternoon Workshop. The afternoon workshops will include critique of poems resulting from the previous day’s work, individual work on writing, and optional consultations with instructor. 4:00 to 7:30 – Free time. Participants who wish to read their work aloud to one another will meet in the Salon at 6:45.
7:30 – Dinner.

Schedule

Wednesday, July 5 Arrive at Villa Vergiliana. Welcome lunch.

Workshop Session I. The Sibyl and the Poet
Topic: Inspiration and perspiration
Exercise: The Sors Vergiliana – taking off from a line in the Aeneid

Thursday, July 6 Session 2, The Underworld

Topic: How do we imagine a place that’s not of this world?
Exercise: Create your own version of the Underworld
Half-day field trip to Cumae (Sybil’s cave, acropolis and remains of the city below) This preliminary visit will be led by Sarah Getty (see July 8).

Topic: Emotion in poetry and narrative
Exercise: Write an encounter with the shade of a lost loved one

Saturday July 8 Full day of excursions – Cumae and the Naples Museum, led by John Wonder

Sunday, July 9 Session 4, Thou Still Unravished Bride of Quietness

Topic: Writing about objects
Exercise: Write a poem about an object seen on one of our excursion

Monday, July 10 Session 5, Future Souls

Topic: Instructing your descendents
Exercise: Write a poem addressing your own descendants.

Tuesday, July 11 Full day excursion to Herculaneum, led by Beverly Berg

( Opulent homes preserved by eruptions of Vesuvius in 79 C.E.)

Wednesday, July 12 Session Six, Aspects of Epic Form

Topic: Shaping a narrative by analogy and meter.
Exercise: Write a short narrative using an epic simile; and rewrite it in dactylic hexameter or blank verse

Thursday, July 13 Session Seven, Returning through the Gate of Horn

Ideas for future work, tips on publication.
Half-Day Excursion to Baia (baths and museum), led by Beverly Berg

Friday, July 14 Full day field to Pompeii (public and domestic spaces preserved by volcanic eruption), led by Beverly Berg and Departure to Rome from Pompeii train station

Cost: $1,545; includes 9 nights at Villa, all transportation inside Italy, all meals except those during excursions.

To register or for more information contact Holly Lorencz, Secretary, The Vergilian Society, at vergsoc@yahoo.com.
Phone: 314-993-4040 x.341.
John Burroughs School
755 Price Road
St. Louis, MO 63124.
The Society’s Web site is www.vergil.clarku.edu.