Fall/Winter 2024: Virtual Classes and Events

Catholic Literary Arts launches its Fall/Winter Semester of Events and Classes.

If you’ve ever wanted to understand what meter is, how it really works, and why poets use it, this is your chance.

Over ten weeks, this course will dive into the intricacies of poetic music through the close study of masterpieces and through assignments in composition designed to foster a mastery of musical technique.

Read the blurbs on the back of almost any contemporary book of poetry, and someone is sure to mention ‘music’ or ‘musicality.’ What does that mean? Few contemporaries, including those who use such verbiage in blurbs, really know. Why is Shakespeare’s poetry actually good poetry? Again: few contemporaries know. (Hint: it has nothing to do with ideas or politics.)

In this course, we’ll discover the secret. We will study in great detail the foundations of melopoeia, or poetic music: rhythm, meter, and sonic mimesis (the function of various types of consonants and the intricacies of vowel pitch in representing phenomena). Indeed, Plato defined poetry as την μουσικήν και τά μέτρα, or ‘music and meter,’ and those who lack technical knowledge of music and meter inevitably struggle to comprehend poems as poems and to appreciate poetry in its fullness.

N.B. Part Two in the spring semester 2025 will focus on exploring the origins, development, and praxis of more ‘modern’ music, including soi-disant ‘free verse’ and the ‘prose-poem.’ Completion of both courses will equip students to appreciate the music in English-language poetry from 1500 to the present day. 

Ryan Wilson is the author of The Stranger World (Measure, 2017), winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize, of How to Think Like a Poet (Wiseblood, 2019), winner of the Jacques Maritain Prize for Non-Fiction, and of Proteus Bound: Selected Translations (Franciscan UP, 2021), a book which A.E. Stallings called “a sweeping literary education unto itself.” National Book Award-finalist Shane McCrae notes that “Few American poets working in meter and rhyme today could write poems to match” those in Wilson’s latest book, In Ghostlight (LSU, 2024). Longtime editor of Literary Matters (literarymatters.org) and co-editor, with April Lindner, of Contemporary Catholic Poetry (Paraclete, 2024), Wilson is widely considered one of the finest literary editors in America today and is a poet who writes, as Mark Jarman notes, “with the authority of mastery.” After many years of working at The Catholic University of America and running the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, & Writers (ALSCW), he now teaches in the M.F.A. program at The University of St. Thomas-Houston.

To register, follow this link.

Join us in experiencing Dr. Wilson reading a selection from his new poems contained in “Saint Thomas and the Forbidden Birds,” his recently released fourth volume of poems, already heralded as “… poems [that] stand in wonder before the tumult and beauty of created things and the capacity of the soul to rise above it.” An informal conversation with Dr. Wilson after the reading will spark further reflection on the poems.

Dr. James Matthew Wilson, Ph.D. is the Cullen Foundation Chair in English Literature and the founding director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of St. Thomas.

The author of fourteen books, his most recent collection of poems is St. Thomas and the Forbidden Birds (Word on Fire, 2024). The Strangeness of the Good (2020) won the poetry book of the year award from the Catholic Media Awards. The Dallas Institute of Humanities awarded him the Hiett Prize in 2017; Memoria College gave him the Parnassus Prize in 2022; and the Conference on Christianity and Literature twice gave him the Lionel Basney Award.

In addition to his role at the University of Saint Thomas, he serves as poet-in-residence of the Benedict XVI Institute, scholar-in-residence of Aquinas College, editor of Colosseum Books, and poetry editor of Modern Age magazine.

To register, follow this link.

Catholic philosopher Jacques writes that all art is Poetry—“that intercommunication between the inner being of things and the inner being of the human Self.” For Maritain, creation itself consists of the “things” of God, which reveal spiritual truths—God’s “secrets”—if we know how to look for them. The Poetry of prose fiction gives us access to the transcendent in the “inner being of things.” In this course, we will read short stories by three masters with an eye for the depths beneath the surfaces.

The course will consist of three weekly Monday evening sessions, each 1 hour + 15 minutes focusing on one short story: “Lions, Harts, and Leaping Does” by J.F. Powers, “Flowering Judas” by Katherine Anne Porter, and “The Beast in the Jungle” by Henry James.

 Dr. J. Larry Allums is Senior Consultant and Board Member of the MacMillan Institute and Executive Director Emeritus of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. He earned his M.A. in Literature and his Ph.D. in Literature and Political Philosophy from the University of Dallas’ Institute of Philosophic Studies. He has edited a volume of essays on epic poetry, The Epic Cosmos, and published articles and book chapters on Dante, ancient Greek and Roman literature, and writers of the American Southern Renascence, including William Faulkner, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, Caroline Gordon, and others.

 To register, follow this link.

Each person of Faith encounters many steps along the pilgrim road toward God. We often wish to share these stories with others. How do we find the right words? How do we put our hard-earned wisdom on the page so that it resonates with others?

Our time together will teach you how to craft stories to be shared in a variety of circumstances: as spiritual reflection, as a devotional aid, as a gift to children or grandchildren, for publication, or for the sheer personal pleasure in finding the right words and putting them in the right order to convey what we really want to say.

We’ll look at resonant details to adjust the tone and mood of our story, how to control pacing, how to keep a reader’s interest, when to use humor, and how to incorporate Scriptural references most effectively, and other questions.

A combination of class time in writing workshops, a sprinkling of curated readings at night, and a deep commitment to each individual’s writing journey will fuel our time together. I encourage you to plan for half-days in class, (optional) individual appointments with me during non-class time, and the remaining free time to write, read, and pray.

The opportunity to meet with me in individual appointments for writing consultation in part of supporting your learning during our time together. Potential topics could be particular writing skills, the publishing industry, an idea for a potential writing project, or understanding your writing vocation, etc.

 Sarah Cortez is a writer, editor and professional teacher of creative writing. Having taught in settings as varied as first-grade classrooms, juvenile detention centers, book festivals, police departments, universities, high schools, and corporate boardrooms, she is an expert in engaging students where they are in their writing journey. She is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, Fellow of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, and Fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her poems, essays, book reviews, and short stories have been anthologized and published in journals, such asTexas Monthly, Rattle, The Midwest Quarterly, Southwestern American Literature, Presence. She is a contributing editor forCatholic Arts Today,an arts columnist forSt. Austin Review,and contributes to theNational Catholic RegisterandTexas Catholic Herald.She has 14 award-winning books across genres, and has been a developmental editor for four publishing houses.

To register, follow this link.

Join historical fiction author and Editorial Director of Chrism Press, Karen Ullo, to explore the research and writing techniques of a genre that creates a unique way to enhance our experience and understanding of the past.

The course will include lecture about types of historical fiction, research techniques and how they differ according to era, and the process of integrating truth with fiction into effective storytelling. Students will then be asked to apply these techniques to create the first chapter or two (about 3000 words) of a historical fiction novel or short story and will be given the opportunity to read and critique each other’s work.

Karen Ullo is the award-winning author of Jennifer the Damned, Cinder Allia, and To Crown with Liberty. She’s the editorial director of Chrism Press and served for more than three years as managing editor of the Catholic literary journal Dappled Things. She holds a MFA in screenwriting from the University of Southron California and has been featured as a speaker at venues across the country including The Louisiana Book Festival, The Catholic Writers Guild Conferences, and Doxacon in Washington, D.C. Her website is karenullo.com.

To register, follow this link.

What is a postcard poem? Exactly what it sounds like, a brief epistolary poem that fits on the back of a postcard.

In this short two-part interactive workshop, you will read through and discuss several exemplar postcard and other short-form poems before rolling up your sleeves for some light-weight in-class writing exercises. Homework will be given for those who wish to continue the adventure between sessions.

Poems composed will largely be between four to eight lines, and can be written in free verse, regular meter, or even as a short prose poem. This workshop will be a great laboratory for those new to the art of writing poems, as well as experienced writers who wish to focus on honing particular skills of conciseness and diction.

So, dust off that bin of postcards you have collected from your travels or cards you have received from others. Don't have a collection of postcards already? Not to fear, the instructor will also provide images of postcards for students to work from. 

Tamara Nicholl-Smith’s poetry has appeared on two Albuquerque city bus panels, one parking meter, numerous radio shows, a spoken-word classical piano fusion CD, and in several publications, including The Examined Life Journal, Catholic Arts Today and America. Her poem on Saint Jerome is part of the display of the Guttenberg Bible installed at the University of Saint Thomas. Tamara is a member of Catholic Literary Arts and a contributor to the “Joy of Catholic Poetry” and “Resurrection Joy” presentations done at parishes, schools, and universities.

To register, follow this link.