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Writing Center Workshop Timelines: 3b: Past Workshops (Unseen Archive)

A 842. Emily Dickinson, “As there are Apartments….” Courtesy of the Amherst College Archives & Special Collections, Amherst College.

“Long Years apart – can / make no / Breach a / second cannot / fill”: Messaging with Emily Dickinson

Taught by: Marta Werner, professor of English at D’Youville College

Where:
Just Buffalo Writing Center
468 Washington Street @ Mohawk, 2nd Floor
Buffalo, NY 14203
Dates: December 5 & December 7, 2017
Time:
4:30 p.m.–5:30 p.m.

One definition of a message is “a verbal, written, or recorded communication sent to or left for a recipient who cannot be contacted directly.” Another is “A usually short communication transmitted by words, signals, or other means from one person, station, or group to another.” Sometimes, you might send a message to yourself. Sometimes you might “message” a stranger. Sometimes you write to someone – something – that won’t—or can’t—write back to you: a lover who has left you, a person who has died, a past you can’t enter, a future you won’t live to see, a planet spinning out its life 92,955,807 miles from the sun.

This workshop explores the empty fullness of messages. It takes as its point of departure the messages—poems, letters?—Emily Dickinson wrote on envelopes close to the end of the 19th century but never sent. In the workshop we will read some of these unsent messages, translate them into the idiom of the 21st century, and to write back to them. At last.

This workshop is FREE, aimed at young students aged 12–18, and limited to 12 participants.

Register