In this generative poetry writing workshop, students will learn about that which backgrounds our rhymes and our stories and our confessions and our voices: blank space. While the course will engage with practical questions—such as “What is the effect of the blank space in this stanza break here?” and "Are my lines too short and creating too much blank space?”—we’ll also ask more fundamental (and maybe scary) questions like “What does this blank space express? Is it actually louder than the line before it?” Students will look at the works of both canonical poets and radical ones, those who employ blank space in subtle but beautiful ways and those who employ blank space in radical and innovative ways. Through in-class writing exercises and homework assignments, students will experiment with blank space. Participants will have the opportunity to bring in older works and revise them with blank space in mind, as well as to share new work with one another. By this short course’s end, students will learn not only to find and use their voice, but also to enunciate and articulate that voice, which is another way of saying to pause, to let silence outline that voice.

In this workshop, we will generate new writing through exercises and prompts.