Poetry Workshop - Making Poems that Last: Construction and Revision
Online | Jan. 14 to Feb. 11 | Ages 18+
A poem is a made thing and, like any made thing, a lasting one requires the right tools and materials, artfulness, craft and great attention to detail. In this workshop, participants will generate poems and will be led through a re-vision process of these drafts through 5 critical “interrogations.” These systematic questionings are designed to make good poems even better, as they undergo reconsideration through a different lens each week. Classes will conclude with generative prompts for new poems, and exemplary poems and instructive readings will be provided. Two poems, each a page to a page and a half in length, should be submitted to the instructor a week before the course begins. Flexible.
Class Times
John Hoppenthaler’s books of poetry are Domestic Garden, Anticipate the Coming Reservoir, Lives of Water, and the forthcoming Night Wing Over Metropolitan Area, all with Carnegie Mellon UP. With Kazim, Ali, he has co-edited a volume of essays on the poetry of Jean Valentine, This-World Company (U of Michigan P). Professor of CW and Literature at East Carolina University, he also serves on the Advisory Board for Backbone Press, specializing in the publication and promotion of marginalized voices. His poetry, essays, and interviews have appeared in Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, New York Magazine, Southern Review, Poetry Northwest, The Literary Review, Blackbird, Southern Humanities Review, and many other journals, anthologies, and textbooks.
