Here, There, and OtherWhere: Dreaming Spaces/Places in Your Poems
Dates: Monday, May 5 - Sunday, June 1
Format: Asynchronous (learn more)
Poet Naomi Shihab Nye has said, “place is really the gravity for poetry. Poetry exists in terms of how it springs out of the earth that you’re in…and the gravity it gives you.” What gravities do we remember and write from? And, what happens when our poems dream new spaces, change the gravity: build new nests, fall down new rabbit holes?
In this generative workshop, we’ll draft poems that venture into myriad spaces–from kitchens and backseats, to real oceans, mythic forests, comets and underworlds. Looking at poems by Margaret Atwood, Robert Duncan, Donika Kelly and more, we’ll note the techniques they use to explore notions of home and away, ideas of inner space, and the outer/other space of the universe and mythic or speculative realms. These poems will help us see how in our own drafts, real spaces can be made strange, imagined spaces can be rendered vivid and immediate, and how both kinds of space may engage with themes like identity, mystery, alienation, refuge, connection.
Poets will leave the course with four new drafts, for which they’ve received thorough, supportive critiques, and inspiration to continue to poetically explore strange, new worlds, and to re-enter and re-dream the once familiar.
Dates: Monday, May 5 - Sunday, June 1
Format: Asynchronous (learn more)
Poet Naomi Shihab Nye has said, “place is really the gravity for poetry. Poetry exists in terms of how it springs out of the earth that you’re in…and the gravity it gives you.” What gravities do we remember and write from? And, what happens when our poems dream new spaces, change the gravity: build new nests, fall down new rabbit holes?
In this generative workshop, we’ll draft poems that venture into myriad spaces–from kitchens and backseats, to real oceans, mythic forests, comets and underworlds. Looking at poems by Margaret Atwood, Robert Duncan, Donika Kelly and more, we’ll note the techniques they use to explore notions of home and away, ideas of inner space, and the outer/other space of the universe and mythic or speculative realms. These poems will help us see how in our own drafts, real spaces can be made strange, imagined spaces can be rendered vivid and immediate, and how both kinds of space may engage with themes like identity, mystery, alienation, refuge, connection.
Poets will leave the course with four new drafts, for which they’ve received thorough, supportive critiques, and inspiration to continue to poetically explore strange, new worlds, and to re-enter and re-dream the once familiar.
Dates: Monday, May 5 - Sunday, June 1
Format: Asynchronous (learn more)
Poet Naomi Shihab Nye has said, “place is really the gravity for poetry. Poetry exists in terms of how it springs out of the earth that you’re in…and the gravity it gives you.” What gravities do we remember and write from? And, what happens when our poems dream new spaces, change the gravity: build new nests, fall down new rabbit holes?
In this generative workshop, we’ll draft poems that venture into myriad spaces–from kitchens and backseats, to real oceans, mythic forests, comets and underworlds. Looking at poems by Margaret Atwood, Robert Duncan, Donika Kelly and more, we’ll note the techniques they use to explore notions of home and away, ideas of inner space, and the outer/other space of the universe and mythic or speculative realms. These poems will help us see how in our own drafts, real spaces can be made strange, imagined spaces can be rendered vivid and immediate, and how both kinds of space may engage with themes like identity, mystery, alienation, refuge, connection.
Poets will leave the course with four new drafts, for which they’ve received thorough, supportive critiques, and inspiration to continue to poetically explore strange, new worlds, and to re-enter and re-dream the once familiar.
