In this generative workshop, we’ll discuss participant poems alongside the subjects, voices, forms, and inquiries they’re in conversation with. When you write a poem, who are you talking to? What sources are you engaging with? What chorus can a poem hold? Does anyone really write alone? We’ll begin the week by sharing participant-made “influence collages” in order to quickly get to know the tone, approach, and priorities of each other’s work. We’ll discuss such socially-minded poetic strategies as retelling, address, quotation, collage, and reference. Each participant will workshop at least three poems during the course of the week, receiving personalized research, somatic, and form-focused prompts intended to guide and complicate writing and discussion. Though our focus will be on student poems, we’ll also look at work by Dara Barrois/Dixon, Claudia Rankine, Vanessa Jimenez Gabb, and Melissa Dickey. This workshop is appropriate for poets at all levels and will conclude with a personalized reading list.

In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; provide first impressions on writing you produce in our week; workshop writing you bring from home.