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April 2018
Daytime Poetry: Crafting Your Best Poem – Voice, Image & Form
Instructor: Sara Robinson $189 Members | $210 Nonmembers Tuesdays, 4/4/18 - 5/22/18 | 10:00 AM - 12:30 PM Using the basic mechanics of poetry as a refresher, participants will write, revise and assess their writing styles. We will focus on voice, images, form, movement, line, and words and study works of notable contemporary poets, using them as keys to creating our best craftsmanship. Students will also use writing journals as paths to creation and prompts and exercises. As we work toward poetry composition…
Find out more »Evening Poetry: Dreamers and Surgeons
Instructor: Annie Kim $189 Members | $210 Nonmembers Thursdays, 4/5/18 - 5/24/18 | 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM Making poems requires both a deep surrender to the unknown and true surgical precision. In our workshop we’ll keep these poles in mind as we examine an essential craft element each week, read from a range of published poems, and dive into each other’s work for the majority of our time. Imagery, line breaks, combining narrative with lyric moments, opening/closing strategies—these and a…
Find out more »Make It New: Beyond Retelling in Poetry
Instructor: Chet'la Sebree $60 Members | $65 Nonmembers Sunday, 4/22/18 | 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM Modernist Ezra Pound is largely credited for encouraging writers to try new things in response to inspiration. He sought recreation as opposed to regurgitation. In this seminar, we will discuss poems that not just retell cultural and personal histories but bring new light to them. We'll explore how poets bring fresh perspectives to Greek mythology, venerated figures, and current and historical events as well as…
Find out more »June 2018
Revisiting the Sonnet
Instructor: Neil Perry $60 Members | $65 Nonmembers Saturday, 6/9/18 | 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM The sonnet is the room in the house of poetry that just won't go away. It is unassuming - a small bedroom perhaps - yet essential. Why do we still write sonnets? How should you write one? What do they mean? This seminar will explore these questions by thinking on the history of the sonnet, the contemporary variety of sonnets, the use of the sonnet…
Find out more »Not Just On Any Walden Pond: Taking Nature into New Poetry Images – Seminar is Full!
Instructor: Sara Robinson $80 Members | $87 Nonmembers Saturday, 6/16/18 | 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM We will focus in this retreat on how nature can inspire our creativity and craftsmanship. What can nature teach us about the “senses” in our writing? Writers will be encouraged to bring their journals, writing notebooks, cameras, to take in surroundings and craft poetry as spontaneous response to surroundings. Workshop and critique techniques will be used to encourage and support one another’s writings. Exercises…
Find out more »July 2018
(HE)ART Speaks: The Mindful Connection Between Poetry and Art
Instructors: Lisa Ellison and Jum Jirapan **FREE for WriterHouse Members | $15 for Nonmembers Tuesday, 7/31/18 | 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM Experience art as meditation through this hands-on seminar that explores the connection between poetry and art. Make your own artwork using the simple painting technique Jum Jirapan used to create her WriterHouse exhibit. This event will include prompts, a conversation with artist Jum Jirapan, meditations facilitated by Lisa Ellison, and opportunities to share. Snacks will be provided. We'll provide the…
Find out more »September 2018
Evening Poetry: The Collagist (Class is Full!)
Instructor: John Most $189 Members | $210 Nonmembers Tuesdays, 9/18/18 - 11/6/18 | 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM In this class, which is open to all poets, we will spend most of our time writing and workshopping new poems. In addition to writing new poems, each week we will read example poems that, in the broadest sense of the word, collage words, forms, sources, genres, styles, allusions. . . Collage is powered by surprise, so our guiding question will be:…
Find out more »Advanced Poetry: Packing a Punch in Your Poetic Endgame
Instructor: Mirabella Mitchell $189 Members | $210 Nonmembers Wednesdays, 9/19/18 - 11/7/18 | 9:30 AM - 12:00 PM Prerequisite: Students must have taken at least two poetry classes. Renowned poet Gregory Orr argues that there are six very different kinds of endings for poems. In this class, we’ll read, explore, and discuss an array of poems ranging from the 16th to 21st centuries, and we’ll use these six diverse “species” of endings as our path into them. However, our topics…
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October 2018
The Songs of Fall: A Poetry Retreat –THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED
Instructor: Sara Robinson $99 Members | $110 Nonmembers Saturday, 10/20/18 | 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM Fall and its change of colors offers writers an opportunity to explore their writing in a natural setting. We can look at our art and see how changing colors, direction of light, plants, trees, streams, offer us opportunities to evaluate our own sense of change in what we compose. We can find inspiration like Robert Duncan’s “Often I Am Permitted to Return to a…
Find out more »February 2019
Poetry as a Personal Odyssey (This seminar is full!)
Instructor: Bill Glose $60 Members | $65 Nonmembers Saturday, 2/16/19 | 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM Following the dictum of doing what you love, this seminar will show poets how they can explore whatever theme, hobby, or territory intrigues them most to create poetry with real power. This seminar will show how to blend personal experience with historical and current events to create work that is universal. Examples of poems in early and later drafts will be used to show…
Find out more »March 2019
Evening Poetry: Before the Poem
Instructor: John Most $189 Members | $210 Nonmembers Tuesdays, 1/15/19 - 3/5/19 | 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM In this class, which is open to all poets, we will spend most of our time writing and workshopping new poems. In addition to writing new poems, each week we will look at what different poets do before the poem, whether it is taking notes, researching, reading, or absolutely nothing. About the Instructor: John Most earned his PhD in media philosophy from…
Find out more »June 2019
Rhyme (This seminar is full!)
Instructor: Neil Perry $60 Members | $65 Nonmembers DATE CHANGE: Saturday, 6/29/19 | 10:00 am – 1:30 pm This seminar will investigate the strange topic of rhyme and rhyming. At once the formal element most readily associated with poetry and the thing most poets first kick out of their tool box, rhyme has a unique and almost paradoxical place in our consideration of craft. We'll look at poems that rhyme and rhyme well. We'll look at poems that rhyme terribly. We'll…
Find out more »July 2019
Evening Poetry: Keeping the Doors of our Imagination Open (This class is full!)
Instructor: Annie Kim $150 Members | $165 Nonmembers SIX Tuesdays, 6/4/19 – 7/9/19 | 6:30 pm – 9:00 pm We often make our most imaginative leaps and surprising discoveries by focusing our conscious attention outside ourselves. In this workshop we’ll invite these discoveries by engaging deeply with objects from the physical world. You'll write poems each week in dialogue with physical objects (i.e. art, everyday tools, benches in a park) and/or found texts (i.e. news, songs, historical documents, letters in…
Find out more »September 2019
“Lingering in the Margins” Poetry Anthology, Reading and Q&A
The River City Poets Anthology Lingering in the Margins grew from three women’s love of poetry. Their humble idea was to offer an opportunity for fledgling poets in their community to be published. Two years and two hundred poetry submissions later, Lingering in the Margins represents the unique voice of over 50 poets, both new and experienced, woven into a tapestry of perspectives. Readings from eight contributors will be followed by a discussion of how our creative spark became published book. Co-editors Joanna Lee, Judy…
Find out more »October 2019
Villanelle Crash Course
Instructor: Claudia Gary $60 Members | $65 Nonmembers Sunday, 10/27/19 | 10:00 am - 1:00 pm Improve your villanelle skills, or write your first one. Guided by an internationally published author of villanelles, sonnets, and other metrical poems, you'll first read classic and contemporary villanelles to see why they work. The class will write a group villanelle, and then, with or without shortcuts, you’ll write one of your own. Next you'll see how your new poem can be improved by…
Find out more »November 2019
Evening Poetry (This class is full!)
Instructor: Douglas Nordfors $189 Members | $210 Nonmembers Wednesdays, 9/18/19 – 11/6/19 | 6:30 pm -9:00 pm This course will follow the traditional, tried-and-true workshop model. Participants will bring in a poem each class to be critiqued by fellow students and the instructor. For anyone who appreciates outside prompts, an optional assignment will be given each week. The aim will be to create a rigorous, but stress free, atmosphere suitable for veteran as well as novice poets. Any style of…
Find out more »February 2020
The Short Long Poem
Instructor: Christopher Kondrich $60 Members | $65 Nonmembers Saturday, 2/1/20 | 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm Long poems marvel us with their expansiveness, but many short poems seem to have this quality as well. Their brevity belies their extraordinary breadth and scope. In this seminar, we’ll explore how to harness the expansiveness of long poetry for our more concise work. We’ll consider four poems—one each by Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Louise Glück, Srikanth Reddy, and Robin Coste Lewis—as examples and guides,…
Find out more »Evening Poetry
Instructor: Douglas Nordfors $189 Members | $210 Nonmembers Wednesdays, 1/15/20 – 3/4/20 | 6:30 pm -9:00 pm This course will follow the traditional, tried-and-true workshop model. Participants will bring in a poem each class to be critiqued by fellow students and the instructor. For anyone who appreciates outside prompts, an optional assignment will be given each week. The aim will be to create a rigorous, but stress free, atmosphere suitable for veteran as well as novice poets. Any style of…
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