This two-hour seminar and generative craft session explores Coleridge’s idea of “stocking up on metaphors” and Ginsberg’s notion of “shopping for images” in poems about—and in conversation with—the setting of the supermarket. It invites readers and poets to revisit and rethink what they know about the power of imagery and metaphor and the variety of ways that metaphor can be achieved on the page. The second half of the class is devoted to generating poems inspired by/borrowing techniques from the examples studied in the first half.
Your will receive a replay of the craft class + the course packet to complete at your own pace
Become familiar with selected excerpts from the Book of Exodus, Psalms, Job, and Proverbs and learn how (and why) poets have adapted these passages, lessons, and motifs in their poetry across time. We will discuss and expand our knowledge of biblical allusions, read insightful excerpts from literary critics (including Alter and others), and read poems by contemporary poets drawing from biblical stories, all in preparation for writing exercises designed to help us generate our own new poems based on the writing of the Old Testament.
In this two-hour craft class and generative workshop, we will explore how poets from various epochs have artfully engaged with ancient stories, and why the gods provide so much dramatic and lyrical fodder. We’ll revisit the most frequently alluded to stories from Greek mythology, close reading excerpts from Homer to Anne Carson as well as poems by Louise Glück, Yusef Komunyakaa, and others to identify how poets transform age-old tales into resonant, contemporary works. We’ll explore the mythical motifs and timeless themes that continue to echo across the ages, deepening our understanding of Greek mythology—yes—but also inspiring us to identify and harness our own relationship to these works, writing into this rich tradition in new ways.
The two hours will be divided into craft lessons/discussions of poem + three generative exercises and time to share as a group. Enrollment limited.
What explains the enduring allure of fairy tales and their place in contemporary poetry? In this two-hour craft class and generative workshop, we will delve into the nuanced world of fairy tales in poems, revisiting a few of the best known stories in their dark originals to understand how poets have transformed this source material over time. From Grimm and Andersen to Anne Sexton, Vievee Francis, and Carol Ann Duffy, we'll navigate how age-old tales and archetypal themes have served as fertile allusions for poets, flexibly transcending their original contexts. We’ll explore how we, too, can be part of the tradition of using fairy tales to address the most bewildering, complex, menacing, and magical parts of contemporary life.
Come ready to revisit stories you know through an entirely new lens thanks to excerpts from insightful critical voices and a carefully curated selection of poems. And—more importantly—come read to write your own poems!
The two hours will be divided into craft lessons/discussions of poems + three generative exercises/sharing as a group. Enrollment limited.
You will receive access to the Zoom recording + the full course packet
I have three chapbooks—two of which have won or been short-listed for major awards—out in the world. I credit each with helping me understand the ambitions and preoccupations of my full-length collections. My first two were stepping stones on the way to publishing my first book. Creating, submitting, and publishing these chapbooks in the US and UK taught me the skills I would later use on a more extended scale.
In this two-hour session, I will walk you through how I think about curating, organizing, and revising chapbooks using my own as models. This instruction will be complemented by exercises that will help you better think about your own work (which, let’s be honest, is the point). I will devote the last 15-minutes of class to Q&A on particular questions/struggles you’re encountering as you embark on your own chapbook journey. Hearing others voice their questions will be of value to you in your own process.
I will provide you with a list of publishers and competitions that focus on chapbooks for your later consideration. But the bulk of this session is for you to get clear on what you are doing/planning to do through the poems in your chapbook, and to offer you practical advice on how to proceed in compiling and submitting your work from a veteran in the field.
Chapbooks are beautiful, appealing objects that often allow us to distill a particular project in a smaller space, concentrating a particular poetic theme or mode of inquiry. Whether you’re just starting to think of putting together a chapbook or in the process of revising one, this session will be useful to you.
Your replay video + craft packet will be sent within a few hours of purchase. You can then follow the course along at your own pace!
Come ready to turn your scraps, drafts, and fragments into poems and breathe new life into stagnant and stuck work!
Salvage, develop, and polish past poems through SIX guided writing exercises
This workshop is for you if:
· You’re at an impasse on how to proceed in a draft
· You’re having trouble finishing new work
· You have drafts with sections you love but can’t seem to figure out how to make the whole thing come together
· You would like some new tools and strategies for revising work
· You want to hold yourself accountable for revisiting and improving past poems
***This is a REPLAY of a 2-hour craft class***
You will receive an edited copy of the Zoom session within 24 hours of purchase over email + the class reading packet/exercises.
In this two-hour craft talk + generative session, we will read a selection of love poems across a wide stylistic range and ask ourselves the following:
• What makes a "good" love poem?
• How do we write intimately while drawing in subjects beyond love?
• How do we revise to nix sentimentality but keep the 🔥 & raw emotion alive?
• How can form work for us in a love poem?
In the second hour, we will do writing exercises designed to help generate our own love poems, applying everything we’ve considered and learned to deepen and enrich our drafts.
***You will receive a replay of the Zoom session within 12 hours of purchase over email + the class reading packet/exercises***
Have you ever wondered how poets manage to pack expressive power into poems of 10 lines or fewer?
This two-hour exploration will delve into the magic of compressed poetry, focusing on works by Andrea Cohen, W.S. Merwin, Timothy Liu, A.R. Ammons, and others, looking for common principles and strategies we may apply to our own writing.
Exercises will be designed to help you craft precise, distilled, and powerful short poems of you own.
***This is a REPLAY of a 2-hour craft class***
You will receive an edited copy of the Zoom session within 24 hours of purchase over email + the class reading packet/exercises.
This two-hour session is devoted to seeing HOW poets manage long poems (3+ pages). We will consider a variety of approaches, focusing on poems in sections, long narrative poems, and series poems. Writers include Lisel Muller, Ross Gay, Mary Oliver, Aracelis Girmay, Anne Carson, and others.
As ever, we will look for common principles and strategies we may apply to our own writing.
Exercises will be designed to help you either begin or develop your own long poems.
Saturday, March 11, 3-5 EST via Zoom
This is a replay of a four-week course on literary criticism that ran between November and December 2023. You will receive 4 videos (each session) + course packets and homework readings.
Wednesday 6-8 pm EST - November 29, December 6, 13, 20
Objective correlative. Negative capability. Spots of time. Overflow of spontaneous feeling recollected in tranquility. Field of action. Poetry as a system of syntax. The head by way of the ear to the syllable…
These are critical phrases and paradigms passed down to us by literary critics. If you’ve taken a class with me, then you know I refer to the objective correlative often. Why? Because it’s a handy way to think about what we’re doing on the page as poets. So are the other terms above, and what better way to familiarize ourselves with them than to go back and read the essays and letters they came from.
The aim of this 4-week course is to familiarize you with critical texts you may not have come across, or not contemplated since college. In our discussions, we will connect our readings to poetry today.
Our schedule (subject to amendments!) will look something like this. Readings will be provided beforehand.
Session # 1:
Excerpts from Wordsworth’s “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” complemented by excerpts from “The Prelude”
Session # 2:
Selected letters from Keats and excerpts of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet
Session #3:
Excerpts from T.S. Eliot “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” Charles Olson “Projective Verse,” Archibald MacLeish “Ars Poetica”
Session #4: Criticism today: Katie Roiphe, Camille Dungy, Linda Gregg, Nicole Sealey, Zadie Smith, and others
This course is for you if:
You are a literature enthusiast or a poet who would like a better handle on these critical concepts and paradigms writers often refer back to
You enjoy the feeling of reading a bit above your reading level—that is, contending with a perspective that can sometimes be challenging, or require revisiting, as literary criticism often does
You enjoy class discussions and close reading essays and poems
***CLASS ENROLLMENT IS LIMITED***
In this two-hour seminar, we explore the historical context for Dickinson’s interest in lexical entries and riddles while looking at example poems from each category. In the first hour, we focus on elements of craft and historical reception. The second hour is a guided exercise on writing poems adapting some of Dickinson’s idiosyncratic impulses on the page.
FREE for yearly paid subscribers to Poetry Today
This is a replay of a 4-week course on Anne Carson’s works. You will receive access to four sessions (8 hours) of Zoom replays + 4 course packets.
Lauded by critics as "one of the most unusual and innovative poets writing today" (The New York Times) with "audacious intelligence" (The Guardian), Anne Carson is a literary phenomenon whose work defies conventional formal categorization. She has made an indelible mark on contemporary literature by bridging the ancient and the avant-garde.
This 4-week course will offer an in-depth exploration of Carson's unique blending of modern poetics with classical allusions through some of her finest genre-bending works. We will look at HOW she puts together these innovative books that challenge our sense of narrative structure and what “a poem can do” by considering:
The interplay of classical mythology and modern themes
Innovations in narrative and poetic form
Philosophical and existential motifs
Studying/gaining familiarity with her many allusions
Grab copies of the books below and join us for what is sure to be a riveting, mind-expanding four weeks!
Week 1 - Eros The Bittersweet
Week 2 - Glass, Irony and God
Week 3 -The Beauty of the Husband
Week 4 - Plainwater
March 15th, 5-7 PM EST (over Zoom)
****Free for members of Conscious Writers Collective****
You will receive an 8-hour course replay over Google Drive
One of poetry’s most electrifying and idiosyncratic voices, Ruefle is renowned for her lyricism, wit, and vivid approach to language. She’s equal parts poet, essayist, and artist blending the critical with the ecstatic, the scholarly with the personal. Her collection of lectures, Madness, Rack, and Honey, is a singularly engaging and imaginative meditation on poetry and creativity: it is one of the most rich and delightful texts and a perfect book to revisit and discuss as a group this spring.
In this four-week course, we will closely read and discuss six of Ruefle’s essays, which will serve as springboards for our own creativity and writing. Our focus will be on reading and analyzing her wonderful essays, unraveling her uniquely poetic and playful logic, and relishing in her engagement with writers past and present.
We have so much to learn from these essays, and I can’t wait to discuss them together.
***Free for members of CWC Prose***
FREE FOR MEMBERS OF CONSCIOUS WRITERS COLLECTIVE
In the darker moments of the 20th century, writers congregated around a notion conveyed in correspondence, lectures, and poetry—namely, the Flaschenpost, or "message in bottle," described by Paul Celan via Osip Mandelstam, who imagined the poet as “the shipwrecked sailor who throws a sealed bottle into the sea at a critical moment,” leaving the poem as a “testament of the deceased” that would find “its secret addressee." This workshop will explore poems by Marina Tsvetaeva, Pushkin, Pasternak, and Rilke. Poets will be invited to develop their own Flaschenpost. Free for CWC members, and $50 for non-members. You can sign up here.
Are you interested in writing book reviews but not quite sure how to begin? The aims of this class are twofold: to introduce you to the various platforms, channels, and approaches to writing reviews (as well as how to pitch them according to the "type" of review) and to discuss and model the craft of capsule reviews (typically ~250 words; my area of expertise as a Reviews Editor) alongside more expansive critical essays. I will draw on my own past reviews for The Times Literary Supplement, Poetry, and Kenyon Review to help you figure out which review style might work best given your goals and interests. Whether you're hoping to publish in journals, build a portfolio of web reviews, or simply sharpen your critical eye, I will help you understand the terrain of reviewing and provide you with a list of venues you might consider approaching with your own reviews.
You will receive a link to the class upon purchase. Replays available if you miss the class.
FREE for ALL members of Conscious Writers Collective (CWC)
Free from members of Conscious Writers Collective
Non-members will receive a link to the session
