The "Hard Work" of Crafting Labor Poetry with Joshua Gottlieb-Miller

Join poet and educator Joshua Gottlieb-Miller as he discusses the crafting of a poetics that examines work and labor conditions in the modern world. Joshua is the author of two collections of poetry--Dybbuk America and The Art of Bagging.

Most of the poems in The Art of Bagging were written while Joshua worked in a grocery store, often in fragments on the folded-up piece of paper he kept tucked in his pocket. He worked at Trader Joe's after getting his undergrad degree, left the store to pursue an MFA, and then returned after completing his advanced degree. Feeling stuck, watching time tick away stocking shelves, Joshua found himself dreading the store but writing more and more.

We equate our worth and identities to our jobs and may even reduce others to theirs. Because so many of his co-workers said or did things that inspired poems, Joshua interviewed as many as he could. The book's arc traces the speaker's recognition of these workers' shared positions—thoughtful individuals enmeshed in a singular, larger system—within an economic and, by the end of the book, metaphysical space.

Joshua will speak to writing across a variety of labor environments. Though a poet, this craft talk will cover processes available to fiction and nonfiction writers as well. We will also discuss generative writing prompts, Woody Guthrie, and solidarity, and end with the reading of a few new poems.

Joshua Gottlieb-Miller received his PhD and MFA in Poetry from the University of Houston, where he also served as a Poetry Editor and Digital Nonfiction Editor for Gulf Coast. Joshua has published poetry, essays, scholarship, hybrid, and multimedia writing. His writing has been awarded fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Tent Writing Conference at the Yiddish Book Center, and elsewhere, and from 2018-2019 he served as an inaugural Post-Harvey Think Tank Fellow at Rice University's Humanities Research Center, representing folklore. His writing has won the Indiana Review Poetry Prize, the Inprint Barthelme Prize in Poetry, and the Inprint Robert J. Sussman Prize. His debut collection, The Art of Bagging, won Conduit’s Marystina Santiestevan First Book Prize. His second book, Dybbuk Americana, is available now from Wesleyan University Press. Joshua teaches at San Jacinto College, and lives in Houston with his wife and son.

https://www.joshuagottliebmiller.com/

One-on-one poetry consultations with Joshua are available during Tulsa LitFest. Read more here:

https://secure.touchnet.com/C20271_ustores/web/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=5210

Books will be avaialble for sale and signing at this event.

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