2011 Residency Schedule

Residency #141
MAY 16 - JUNE 5
Application deadline: February 11, 2011

THOMAS SAYERS ELLIS, poetry

Thomas Sayers Ellis co-founded The Dark Room Collective (in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1988); and received his M.F.A. from Brown University. He is the author of Skin, Inc. (Graywolf Press, 2010) and The Maverick Room (Graywolf Press, 2005), which won the John C. Zacharis First Book Award, and a recipient of a Mrs. Giles Whiting Writers’ Award. His poems and photographs have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Callaloo, Best American Poetry (1997, 2001 and 2010), Grand Street, The Baffler, Jubilat, Tin House, Poetry, and The Nation Mr. Ellis is a contributing writer to Waxpoetics and Poets & Writers. He is also an Assistant Professor of Writing at Sarah Lawrence College, a faculty member of the Lesley University low-residency M.F.A Program and a member of the Cave Canem Faculty. He lives in Brooklyn, New York and is currently working on The Go-Go
Book: People in the Pocket in Washington, D.C.

Residency Statement
I am interested in poetic risks, in the matrimony of prose and prosody, of fragment and sentence, in the way varying perspectives, lengths of utterance and written sculptural exploration can construct synthesis and tension, in poems that gather off-subject from stanza to stanza without losing control. There’s no such thing as formlessness, so we will allow our poems to discover their own shapes on the way to becoming “patterned, wild and free.” In addition to this, plan to be bold enough to add something of your secret-self to metaphor, simile, alliteration, etc.

Application Requirements
Applicants should submit up to 5 poems, a statement of anatomy on the creative process of one of the submitted poems, and a photocopy of your favorite photograph. Please also send a resume, and letter of intent.

For more information on the artist visit www.blueflowerarts.com