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Finding Your Voice
Where I am From: Finding Your Voice Through Poetry Instructor: Ebony Walden Cost: $60 Members | $65 Non-members Sunday, October 23, 2016 | 1:00 PM-5:00 PM Are you ready to give voice to your unique experience with creativity, confidence and dynamism? Poetry can help you craft your life experiences into something beautiful, so that you can share it with the world. This interactive workshop will give you a new appreciation for the power of poetry and practical ways this form…
Find out more »Advanced Poetry – Class is Full
Instructor: John Most Cost: $189 Members | $210 Non-members 8 Tuesdays, January 10 - February 28, 2017 | 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM Each week we will bring in poems to discuss. In our discussions, we will focus on construction and revision practices in relation to the broader vision and poetic approaches of the individual poets in the group. There will be optional writing suggestions each week. Each poet will receive written and verbal feedback from the instructor. Previous workshop…
Find out more »Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary – Class is Full
Instructor: Sharron Singleton Cost: $189 Members | $210 Non-members 8 Wednesdays, January 11 - March 1, 2017 | 1:00 PM-3:30 PM The poet, Gregory Orr, says, “Poetry…is a huge repository of focused testimony about what it is to be human – to endure emotions and experience … to think and feel and sense and remember and imagine, all under the pressure of an urgency that compresses language to its barest, sensuous essence.” This workshop will help you transform your ordinary thoughts, feelings and memories into…
Find out more »Letters as Poems
Instructor: Roselyn Elliott Cost: $60 Members | $65 Non-members Saturday, January 14, 2017 | 1:00 PM-5:00 PM Write a letter to your favorite character in history—or to anyone you choose—in the form of a poem. This form of poetry was written by ancient poets and continues to be popular among lovers and students of verse today. This three-and-a-half hour seminar and will offer students an opportunity to read, discuss, and write poems in which the speaker addresses a specific person in…
Find out more »Advanced Poetry
Instructor: John Most Cost: $189 Members | $210 Non-members 8 Tuesdays, March 21, 2017 - May 9, 2017 | 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM Each week we will bring in poems to discuss. In our discussions, we will focus on construction and revision practices in relation to the broader vision and poetic approaches of the individual poets in the group. There will be optional writing suggestions each week. Each poet will receive written and verbal feedback from the instructor. Previous workshop…
Find out more »Daytime Poetry: Making Magic
Instructor: Judy Longley Cost: $189 Members | $210 Non-members 8 Wednesdays, March 22, 2017 – May 10, 2017 | 1:00 PM - 3:30 PM Making poetry is the process of lifting everyday life into magical realms through symbol, figure and metaphor. This 8 week course will involve using the inspiration of other poet’s examples and the elements of craft to produce new visions of the world and perhaps your own life. Let the magic begin! Judy Longley of Charlottesville, Virginia, has published four…
Find out more »Poetry of Resistance
Instructor: Annie Kim Cost: $60 Members | $65 Non-members Sunday, April 2, 2017 | 1:00 PM - 4:30 PM A poem can be an act of defiance. Poetry lets us mourn, rage, rally, love where we don’t want to, see what we’d rather miss. Poetry tells the truth in its own way. As W. H. Auden wrote: “Poetry is not concerned with telling people what to do, but with extending our knowledge of good and evil. . .” But if…
Find out more »Writing Nature
Instructor: Neil Perry Cost: $60 Members | $65 Non-members Saturday, 6/17/17 | 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM How do we use the natural world when we write poems? How does it use us? Is it possible to write a poem that is not 'nature writing' (I say no....)? This seminar will explore the ways poets can use and have used the natural world as a guide, a prompt, an antagonist and an inspiration in poems. We will take long looks at poems that…
Find out more »Pattern and Form in Poetry
Instructor: Kristen Rembold Cost: $142 Members | $158 Non-members 6 Tuesdays, 5/23/17 - 6/27/17 1:00 PM - 3:30 PM This class will be an examination of pattern and form in poetry. All poets are pattern makers. We'll read examples from literature (mainly recent examples) and set about deconstructing/constructing our own forms, too. Participants will have the opportunity to submit and workshop poems each week, and we will view those poems-in-process through the lens of pattern/exception. Even if you don't think of yourself…
Find out more »Evening Poetry
Instructor: Mark Parlette-Carino Cost: $142 Members | $158 Non-members 6 Tuesdays, 5/23/17 - 6/27/17 | 6:30 PM – 9:30 PM This workshop is open to all poets—beginners, dabblers and dedicated writers. In it, you'll have the chance to create and share new work each week. We'll use the workshop, and some discussion of published poems and writing processes, to explore different aspects of what makes poems work—the language, the images, the ideas, the rhetorical structures. Our goal is to marvel at…
Find out more »Of Brevity and Bigness
Instructor:Annie Kim Cost: $60 Members | $65 Non-members Saturday, 8/5/17 | 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM Brevity is the soul of wit. But what of poetry? Working from the premise that even big poems are made up of well-tooled little parts, we'll dig into examples of both big and little poems to unpack the art of poetic brevity. We'll explore ideas for revising work with an eye toward speed and grace. While writers of all levels are welcome, this class…
Find out more »Art of Recklessness: Surprise Yourself (Generative)
Instructor: Chet'la Sebree $25 Members | $30 Non-members Saturday, 10/7/17 | 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Feeling like a one-trick pony in your poems? Looking to get out of your comfort zone to try something new? In the first installment of this lunchtime seminar series—that uses Dean Young’s The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction as a guiding principle—we will discuss ways to surprise yourself in your writing practice using generative strategies that can act as a…
Find out more »Art of Recklessness: Surprise Others (Subversion)
Instructor: Jane Friedman $25 Members | $30 Non-members Saturday, 10/14/17 | 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM A good poem teaches a reader how to read it; however, many of these poems also subvert our expectations in meaningful and surprising ways. In the second installment of this lunchtime seminar series—that uses Dean Young’s The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction as a guiding principle—we will discuss ways in which you can both create and subvert readers’ expectations through…
Find out more »Art of Recklessness: Revision
Instructor: Chet'la Sebree $25 Members | $30 Non-members Saturday, 10/21/17 | 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Want to revise a lifeless poem? Don’t know how? In the final installment of this lunchtime seminar series—that uses Dean Young’s The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction as a guiding principle—we will look at two versions of the same poem as a way of discussing how to revise life into a well-crafted but otherwise flat poem. Chet’la Sebree, a mid-Atlantic…
Find out more »Daytime Poetry Workshop (1 spot left!)
Instructor: Kristen Rembold $189 Members | $210 Nonmembers Tuesdays, 9/26/17 - 11/14/17 | 1:00 PM – 3:30 PM In this poetry class, we will learn more about the elements that make up the body of a poem through means of reading assignments, class discussion, and lectures. We will spend an equal amount of time in workshop mode, examining our poems with particular attention paid to the body, form, and pattern of the poem. Kristen Staby Rembold’s most recent book is a…
Find out more »Daytime Poetry: Pattern and Form
Instructor: Kristen Rembold $189 Members | $210 Nonmembers Tuesdays, 1/16/18 - 3/6/18 | 1:00 PM – 3:30 PM All poems, including free verse, rely on formal elements. Join us as we workshop our poems with an eye to form, pattern, and other elements of poetry. We will examine and "workshop" examples from literature as well. About the Instructor: Kristen Staby Rembold’s fourth book of poetry, Music Lesson, is forthcoming from FutureCycle Press. Her poetry chapbook Leaf and Tendril was published…
Find out more »Evening Poetry: Alterations – Draft to Poem
Instructor: John Most $189 Members | $210 Nonmembers Tuesdays, 1/16/18 - 3/6/18 | 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM “Revision involves bringing into alignment with the world of that poem what that poem needs to be.” --Audre Lorde Each week we will discuss different ways to alter, or revise, our poems: from abstraction to clarity, from metaphor to description. We will also look at different drafts of well-known poems, looking at why particular poets altered or revised a poem. Or didn’t.…
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 »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…
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