A weekend of poetry featuring poetry workshops and lectures by seasoned poets/teachers and a reading and master class by Pulitzer-nominated poet Cornelius Eady.

Cornelius Eady’s poems draw on the rhythms of the blues and jazz. Indeed, many of his poem titles allude to traditional African-American hymns and modern musicians such as Thelonius Monk and Miles Davis. Eady is the author of seven collections including: Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems (2008), a witty and unsentimental collection that forms a moving - and sometimes searing - testament to the power of poetry; Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, winner of the 1985 Lamont Prize; The Gathering of My Name, a Pulitzer Prize nominee; and Brutal Imagination, a cycle of two poems that offers a stark reappraisal of race in America. Eady is cofounder of Cave Canem, a summer workshop retreat for African American poets. He is the recipient of fellowships from the NEA, and the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations. His collaboration with jazz composer Diedre Murray has resulted in several theater works, including Running Man, which won an Obie, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.

Workshops throughout the weekend will be offered by SBWC’s poetry workshop leaders Perie Longo, (Santa Barbara’s poet laureate) Christopher Buckley and David Starkey, as well as accomplished poets and instructors Ellen Kelley, Lois Klein, Marilyn McEntyre, Santa Barbara’s first poet laureate Barry Spacks, Paul Willis, and Chryss Yost.

Cost for the weekend is $325 for commuter students. This includes all workshops and lunches and dinners from Friday dinner through Sunday lunch. For those who wish to stay at the retreat center, the cost is $495 for a double-occupancy room and all meals, or $595 for single-occupancy.