Poetry Workshop: Writing about the Natural World

Week 2 | July 4–8 | Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall | Ages: 18+

In this poetry workshop, we’ll discuss contemporary nature poems from a variety of literary magazines (including my own online magazine Plant-Human Quarterly), but our own poems will serve as the inspiriting core of discussion for this workshop. We’ll look at poems in all their complexity, from imagery and metaphor, to sonics and diction, to tone and rhetoric, and we’ll pay special attention to how these various poetic effects reinforce the content of a nature poem. The workshop atmosphere will be convivial but serious in purpose, and participants' poems will be treated with respect. Throughout the week, we'll consider writing exercises that might steer you toward new strategies and discoveries in making a poem. 

Generative. The primary class focus is on in-class craft analysis and discussion, in-class exercises, and optional take-home prompts; ideal for writers looking for new ways to invigorate their writing practice throughout the entire year; useful to writers at all levels. (Ages 18+)

Class Times

Neil Shepard

Neil Shepard’s most recent book, How It Is: Selected Poems, was published in 2018 by Salmon Poetry (Ireland), and in 2019, he edited Vermont Poets & Their Craft (Green Writers Press, VT). His new collection, The Book of Failures, is due out in 2023. His poems appear in such magazines as the Harvard Review, New England Review, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Sewanee Review, Southern Review, and online at Poetry Daily, Verse Daily and Poem-a-Day. He founded and edited for a quarter century the Green Mountains Review, and he currently edits the new literary magazine Plant-Human Quarterly. He splits his time between Vermont and NYC, where he teaches workshops at Poets House. 

For more information: https://www.neilxshepard.com/