Advanced Poetry Workshop

Workshopping and revision are an opportunity to cultivate self-awareness as artists. The more we understand ourselves—our writing tendencies, fears, tastes, and the origins of those tastes—the easier it is for us to grow and allow for personal artistic breakthroughs.

In this robust, MFA-style poetry workshop, we will create a supportive and collaborative space for revising original, vibrant poetry. The workshop will consist of reading and thoughtful group conversation about individual poems written by artists enrolled in the class. The focus will be twofold: to encourage bold imagination, and to invigorate our usual approaches to writing.

In addition to reading each other’s work, we’ll also read short craft essays accompanied with selected poems. Each week, these will provide a framework for our discussion. At the start of every meeting, we will briefly review the ideas found in these texts with an eye towards recognizing different creative approaches and how we might apply them to our own practice.

You are welcome to bring in new drafts or older work to be workshopped. I will offer feedback on each poem you submit, which will consist of both celebrations that highlight the strength, beauty, and originality of each piece, as well as opportunities for further development and the reasoning for it. Optionally, at the end of the course, you can revise the poems you workshopped, and submit them as a portfolio to me for additional feedback.

Everyone will be encouraged to participate in class discussion and give oral feedback on fellow participants’ work. The more we engage in workshop, the more we enjoy it, and the more we are inspired. I also encourage everyone to comment on their peer’s work on in writing on Wet Ink, but I don’t require it.

Who This Course is For

• Writers with some experience writing poetry who are eager to revise their work based on encouraging and constructive feedback.
• For poets ready to take their work to the next level, and help classmates do the same, in a thoughtful, engaging and focused learning environment. 

Learning and Writing Goals

Learning Goals

In this course, you will learn to: 

•   Write and revise poetry that is original, authentic, and engaging.
•   Discuss the aesthetic merit of individual poems.
•   Become more aware of your writing habits and recurring choices.
•   Become more aware of the concepts that underpin your art.
•   Become a more playful, courageous and intentional writer.
•   Overcome creative blocks by finding new approaches to challenging  drafts.

Writing Goals

• You will workshop six poems that, after revision, you will be able to drop into the manuscript you are working on, or have as a foundation toward a new project.

Zoom Schedule

We will meet on Zoom on Wednesdays from 7-9 pm Eastern.

Weekly Syllabus

Each Sunday morning, I will post readings for the following week. On Mondays, you will post your poem for that week’s workshop, along with any guiding questions you have about your work. Please read your classmates’ poems prior to our Zoom meetings on Wednesday.

Week 1: Craft

We will start this workshop with a brief discussion on the necessity (and fetishizing) of craft as well as allowing weirdness into our poems.

Week 2: Sincerity

This week we will frame our workshop with a discussion on sincerity in poetry. What do truth and sincerity have to do with a good poem?

Week 3: The Triggering Town

Richard Hugo says, “Give up what you think you have to say, and you’ll find something better.” Reading Hugo’s thoughts on obsession and one’s relation to language, we will look into the origins of our own desires for writing, and where they could lead.

Week 4: The Poet’s Moveset 

This week we will think about our signature tendencies in poems. Which ones are we using as crutches and which ones are our unique characteristics?

Week 5: Temperament & Form

We will look at Gregory Orr’s four temperaments with the intention of becoming more aware of our own gifts in order to lean into them further, expanding our poetic arsenal by investing in those aspects of poetry that we tend to overlook.

Week 6: Lineation & Syntax

Poets are the only writers that use lineation, and how a line ends has important implications. They can create interruptions, edges, corners, undulations, repetitions, variations, subtle shifts, and dramatic leaps.

In addition to line endings, various structures—syntax, grammatical phrasing, various organizational orders and twists—affect how poetic units work. With that in mind we will look at where sentences fall in our poems. We will also look at what the edges of our poems create, and how the parts of our poems work in relation to one another.

$445.00 Original price was: $445.00.$380.00Current price is: $380.00.Enroll Now