Schroeder speaks at poetry workshop Saturday in Palatine

Steven Schroeder, co-founder of the Virtual Artists Collective, will lead the Northwest Cultural Council's Second Saturday Poetry Workshop from 9 a.m. to noon Jan. 8 on the topic “What Heroes Do: An Epic Conversation.”

The artists collective has published five full-length poetry collections each year since it began in 2004. Schroeder teaches at the University of Chicago in Asian Classics and the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults, and at Shenzhen University in China.

He has published extensively in philosophy and religious studies and has lectured and written on the relationship of poetry with philosophy and of both with religion. He has teamed with Chinese colleagues to translate work of contemporary Chinese poets; and has written a book on Henri Bergson with a Russian colleague. He has been a featured reader and guest professor at Yunnan University in China and with Kunming poets he began the Chicago-Kunming poetry group.

“Some people have made much of the absence of an ‘epic' in classical Chinese literature, noting that it contains nothing like the Iliad,” he said. “I get excited whenever anyone makes something of the presence of an absence — and even more so when ways of containing nothing are (even unwittingly) compared.”

Participants are encouraged to bring 12 copies of their work to share.

Workshops take place at the Palatine Public Library, 700 N. North Court, Palatine. The cost is $15. RSVP by phone or email to (847) 382-6922 or nwcc@northwestculturalcouncil.org.