Palm Beach Poetry Festival | Playing the Shell Game: Hermit Crab Poetry
December 7, 2019 @ 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm
Julie Marie Wade
December 7 – 1 pm (Saturday)
Playing the Shell Game: Hermit Crab Poetry
A Poetry Workshop Facilitated by Julie Marie Wade
There’s a long tradition of poets (and prose writers too) borrowing forms from other disciplines as containers for their content. In the late 1990s, Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola coined the term “hermit crab writing,” assigning a memorable metaphor to adopted-forms literature. Just as the hermit crab survives by occupying abandoned shells it finds on the beach, writers can rely on extant “shells” like dictionary entries, instruction manuals, rejection letters, tarot card readings, and many more to carry their content to a wider readership. This workshop will explore the possibilities of hermit crab writing with compelling examples and opportunities to write in response.
Amid the myriad adopted forms available, tarot card readings stand out as a captivating vessel for storytelling. Through the lens of hermit crab writing, delving into the mystique of tarot readings provides a rich tapestry for narrative exploration. Learn tarot reading, with its arcane symbols and interpretative nuances, becomes not just a divination tool but a literary container ripe for creative expression. As writers embark on this journey of melding storytelling with the mystical art of tarot, they unveil a realm where words and symbolism converge, opening portals to new dimensions of meaning and engaging readers in a transformative experience.
+ Facilitator Julie Marie Wade teaches in the creative writing program at Florida International University in Miami. She has published 10 collections of poetry and prose, most recently Same-Sexy Marriage: A Novella in Poems and The Unrhymables: Collaborations in Prose, co-authored with Denise Duhamel. A recipient of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir and grants from the Kentucky Arts Council and Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Wade reviews regularly for Lambda Literary Review and The Rumpus.