Find Your Poetic Wellspring: Writing the Poems that Matter
with Sarah Rose Nordgren
December 10, 2025
Length: 6 Weeks
Open to AllText-Based
Original price was: $445.00.$380.00Current price is: $380.00.
Original price was: $445.00.$380.00Current price is: $380.00.Enroll Now
As poets, we are drawn to make meaning through language. From this core inspiration, we also need to forge a vital, ongoing connection to what drives our poetry today, as we are now. In this course, you will discover—or rediscover—your poetic vision, and the wellspring of your most powerful poetry.
During our time together, you will explore your personal “flood subjects”—the obsessions and resonant sources that exist deep inside you and which fuel you to write, practice opening your eyes and other senses to the world around you, probe your fears and dreams, and find poetry in the language that surrounds you every day. Our goal will not simply be to create more “publishable” poems (though that will likely follow as well), but to write more poems that matter: poems charged with energy, urgency, and power, and perhaps some of what the poet Linda Gregg referred to as “luminosity.”
Each week, I will provide a written introduction to the week’s theme, links to brief readings that will provide inspiration for your own work, a discussion question for you to engage with to connect with your classmates and deepen your engagement with the course topics, and a thoughtfully-designed writing prompt for you to generate a new poem. You will also receive nuanced and encouraging feedback on each of your poems from me as well as your workshop group, and write feedback for your classmates as well.
At the end of this course, you will come away with six new poems of your own, a more nuanced understanding of your poetic subjects, and practice seeing the world with the eyes of a poet.
Note: There will be no new materials or assignments during the week of December 22–28, 2025. Because of this break, the 6-week course will take place over a 7-week span.
Who This Course is For
Open to poets of all experience levels, this course welcomes beginners who wish to see the world through the eyes of a poet and experienced writers looking to reconnect with the deeper reasons behind their work.
Learning and Writing Goals
Learning Goals
- Deepen awareness and understanding of your own poetic subjects.
- Become a “noticer” and awaken your senses to the world around you.
- Practice more effectively delivering the essence of your poems through language.
- Refine your use of image.
- Overcome creative blocks by tapping into new subject matter.
Writing Goals
- You will generate six new poems.
- You will also come away with feedback on these new poems that you can use to revise them as well as inform your future writing.
Weekly Syllabus
Week 1 - The Art of Finding
This week we will get to know one another and the workshop process, and will also start practicing “the art of finding” by tuning into our senses so that they can perceive the world around us more fully.
Week 2 - Sources and Flood Subjects
Every writer needs a subject. Some of the inspiration for our poems comes from what we observe around us, but much of it also comes from inside of us–our memories, dreams, intellectual interests, and griefs. Developing awareness of these sources is what we’ll focus on in the assignments this week.
Week 3 - Fear
Fear can be hard to talk about, but it is often an invisible driver behind many of our life decisions, not to mention our dreams and preoccupations. This week we’ll spend some time examining our fears and how they might fuel, rather than limit, our poems.
Week 4 - The Language of Poetry
One of the defining features of poetry is its exploration of language as multi-sensory. This week we will continue to develop our relationship with the physicality of language by exploring how the sounds and rhythms of language impact and reflect what we have to say.
Week 5 - Dreams and Duende
We have our own personal sources and obsessions, but there are also more universal and cultural signs and symbols that we, as poets, can access. This week we will explore superstitions, symbols, dreams, and the sacred in poetry.
Week 6 - Finding Found Poetry
Found poetry is about feeling surprised, and about working with a purposely limited set of materials to explore limitless possibilities. This week we will attune ourselves to the language that surrounds us every day.
Original price was: $445.00.$380.00Current price is: $380.00.Enroll Now
Student Feedback for Sarah Rose Nordgren:
The best part of working with Sarah Rose was her genuine enthusiasm for the success of my poems–enthusiasm coupled with an extensive knowledge of poetry and craft. I felt she brought the same care, thoughtfulness, and precision to helping me revise my own poems as she would to her own work. Her feedback has depth and heart. Quinn Lewis
Sarah is one of the best poetry teachers I have worked with. She takes time to find out the creative concerns of each and every one of her students, and tailor her feedback for them accordingly. As an artist who moves between forms, Sarah is also extremely attentive to how her students can broaden their intellectual and artistic horizon. Her insightful feedback led me to re-examine lines and stanzas that, in my mind, had already ossified, and thus, see each and every poem anew. Nandini Dhar author of Historians of Redundant Moments
Sarah Rose was instrumental in helping me re-define and refresh my efforts in writing poetry. Her keen critique and in-depth feedback encouraged me to take my work to the next level, resulting in the publication of several individual poems, and ultimately to the publication of my debut poetry chapbook. With Sarah Rose’s guidance, I felt motivated to write into the art of finding poetry everywhere! Alan Perry, author of Clerk of the Dead
Sarah Rose possesses a keen eye for detail and offers expert advice on how to improve poems. But best of all, she doesn’t merely suggest, she inspires, and helps writers to see their work in new ways. She sets them on a path to finding exactly what the poem or manuscript needs. Cheryl Whitehead, author of Distant Relations
December 10, 2025
Length: 6 Weeks
Open to AllText-Based
Original price was: $445.00.$380.00Current price is: $380.00.
Original price was: $445.00.$380.00Current price is: $380.00.Enroll Now
