Poem Revision Intensive for Intermediate to Advanced Poets

The key to getting your poetry published is craft-driven revision techniques. In this course, you will experience a supportive and educational atmosphere where you will deconstruct your poems to learn both about their inner-workings and how to arrive at their final iterations. The revision process doesn’t have to be overwhelming, and is essential for deeply understanding your work as you send it out into the world.

You’ll work through over a dozen revision techniques, learning to assess, refine and self-evaluate key aspects of your poetry, including word choice, line breaks, imagery, figurative language, and structure. This is not a traditional workshop or peer-critique class. Instead, I’ll guide you on how to direct your own poems through the critical revision steps necessary for success in competitive literary publishing.

By the end of the course, you’ll have a clearer vision of your poems’ literary strengths and a stronger understanding of where to submit your work for publication.

Who This Course is For

This course is best suited for experienced poets—those who have previously studied and taken poetry courses, actively read contemporary poetry, and have a substantial body of revision-ready work. Ideal for those seeking to refine their work for traditional publication.

Learning and Writing Goals

Learning Goals

In this course, you will learn: 

• Over a dozen poetry revision techniques.
• How to be your own best reviser and editor.
• How to analyze the literary qualities of your individual poems.

Writing Goals

• You will revise your poems in over a dozen ways.
• Each week, you will add to a written list of self-guided ways to revise every future poem.
• By the end of class, you will arrive at final versions of a dozen poems.

Zoom Schedule

Note: Our first Zoom meeting will be Wednesday, April 23rd from 7-8 PM Eastern. All subsequent Zoom meetings will be held each week on Tuesdays, from 7-8 PM Eastern.

Activities include all-group in-class writing time with new prompts, all-class discussions, and questions for the instructor to field on all writing-related topics, including revision strategies and publishing tips.

Weekly Syllabus 

Week One: The Creative Process

Writing Invitation: In what ways has imagination played a role in your work? Write a short essay about your creative process, including all the steps from blank page to published work. For example, do you employ Peter Elbow’s “Freewriting” technique, Robert Bly’s deep-imagery, word-play, sound association, assemblage?

Week Two: “Kill Your Darlings”

Writing Invitation: Choose four of your favorite poems. Without reading each one, ask yourself, “How memorable is each and every word?” Sometimes, the love we have for our poems can blind us to their failings. As an exercise, rewrite each of your poems from memory. Afterwards, compare and contrast the versions. Which lines, phrases, words did you omit? What new lines did you create?

Week Three: Central Tension

Writing Invitation: All art has tension, including literary poetry. Tension can exist in either the poem’s structure or its content. Given six of your poems, evaluate the elements of tension. What opportunities are there for improving upon these elements?

Week Four: “On the Function of the Line”

Writing Invitation: While not all poems have line breaks, one of this week’s topics includes the poetic line. Given three of your delineated poems, you’ll read and study Denise Levertov’s seminal essay, and you’ll rework your poems’ line breaks and structure in order to arrive at final drafts that can be recited by your future readers exactly as you had intended.

Click the Enroll Now button below, enter your details on the Checkout page,
and reserve your spot in the course.

$345.00Enroll Now