Craft Seminar: The Art of Listening with Stephen Kuusisto
Craft Seminar: The Art of Listening with Stephen Kuusisto
2 Sessions: Saturdays, January 10 + 17
1:00-3:00pm ET
Stephen Kuusisto
Join blind poet and memoirist Stephen Kuusisto as he talks about what it means to be a “literary listener.” He is the author of the memoirs Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet’s Journey; Planet of the Blind (a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year”), Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening, and of the poetry collections Only Bread, Only Light; Letters to Borges; and Old Horse, What is to Be Done?
Kuusisto writes: “Starting in the 1920’s creative writers turned to the image as the means for conveying immediacy in literature. The idea was to be as clear as news photos. These talks will instead focus on sound as a tool of the imagination. Igor Stravinsky said: “Hearing has no merit. A duck hears also.” Our goal is to explore the art of active listening. “
We’ll explore opera arias, steamboat whistles, the chance music of what happens around us, conversations overheard, the sound of a baseball cracking off a bat, water coursing, Chet Baker’s trumpet, Beethoven’s old piano—in short talk about stretching our ears. The aim is to promote great listening, literary invention, and yes, fun.
Session One: Who Are the Great Literary Listeners?
Kuusisto talks about literary listening: why is it different from just hearing things? From John Keats to Tillie Olson, from Hemingway to Toni Morrison the best writers have had a true felicity for deep listening and have conveyed it in their work. One outcome is that you’ll appreciate the auditory imagination when reading.
Session Two: The Practice of Active Listening
Kuusisto provides exercises (many drawn from his own life of blind travel) that will sharpen the skills of anyone who wants to not only listen with attention, but also put that experience into writing.
Students will discover…
The difference between hearing and deep listening
How to incorporate listening into creative writing
Deep listening changes the world for every writer.
This class has 3 full scholarships available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, January 2.
Stephen Kuusisto, who has been blind since birth, is an acclaimed poet who has written extensively about his experience of blindness, most recently in the bestselling Have Dog, Will Travel (Simon & Schuster, 2018) which Temple Grandin praised as “A perceptive and beautifully crafted memoir.” His most recent book of poetry is Letter to Borges (Copper Canyon Press, 2013). Other books include his memoirs Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening (W.W. Norton & Co., 2006) and Planet of the Blind (Dial Press, 1997), which was a New York Times Notable Book, and the poetry collection Only Bread, Only Light (Copper Canyon Press, 2000). He is currently working on a collection of prose poems for Copper Canyon Press entitled Mornings With Borges as well as a collection of political poems about disability. He is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Literature.