Untitled: A Poetry Journey
Every other Friday, March 21 - August 22, 2025 (12 sessions), 3-5 PM (ET)
Limited to 8
This six-month poetry journey will guide you through everything you need to know in order to feel more comfortable and confident about reading and writing poetry. Not everyone’s end-point is a book. Sometimes, you just want to learn the craft without the pressure of publishing, let alone producing a body of work that converses and coalesces. You want a solid grounding in the basics, not a lengthy and expensive MFA program.
Each leg of the journey will include ad-hoc readings, exercises, and prompts that will accrue over time to provide you with a deepened connection to, and understanding of, poetry. The more you participate, the more you will benefit. We will give each other a passport to go wherever the muse beckons, on a quest for poems that inspire, soothe, surprise, amuse, and yes, even sometimes confuse us.
This trip is not meant to be yet another task in our over-scheduled lives, but a respite from same—a holding space for our poet-selves to reset and be replenished. I recommend on-boarding for at least a month, but there’s a weekly option if you would prefer to begin your journey, as Lao Tzu said, with “a single step.”
Traditional critiques are not part of this journey, but we will trade process-notes, free-writes, struggles, breakthroughs and, of course, poems. Think of these sharing sessions more as conversations than critiques. Think of the journey as an alternative, and much more affordable, MFA residency.
Suitable for voyagers from virgin to seasoned, I warmly invite you to explore the outer banks of poetic possibility with me. Whether you join for one month or six, I can’t wait to travel with you!
Note: We will meet in-person at The Poetry Barn, weather-permitting. We may occasionally meet on Zoom.
Every other Friday, March 21 - August 22, 2025 (12 sessions), 3-5 PM (ET)
Limited to 8
This six-month poetry journey will guide you through everything you need to know in order to feel more comfortable and confident about reading and writing poetry. Not everyone’s end-point is a book. Sometimes, you just want to learn the craft without the pressure of publishing, let alone producing a body of work that converses and coalesces. You want a solid grounding in the basics, not a lengthy and expensive MFA program.
Each leg of the journey will include ad-hoc readings, exercises, and prompts that will accrue over time to provide you with a deepened connection to, and understanding of, poetry. The more you participate, the more you will benefit. We will give each other a passport to go wherever the muse beckons, on a quest for poems that inspire, soothe, surprise, amuse, and yes, even sometimes confuse us.
This trip is not meant to be yet another task in our over-scheduled lives, but a respite from same—a holding space for our poet-selves to reset and be replenished. I recommend on-boarding for at least a month, but there’s a weekly option if you would prefer to begin your journey, as Lao Tzu said, with “a single step.”
Traditional critiques are not part of this journey, but we will trade process-notes, free-writes, struggles, breakthroughs and, of course, poems. Think of these sharing sessions more as conversations than critiques. Think of the journey as an alternative, and much more affordable, MFA residency.
Suitable for voyagers from virgin to seasoned, I warmly invite you to explore the outer banks of poetic possibility with me. Whether you join for one month or six, I can’t wait to travel with you!
Note: We will meet in-person at The Poetry Barn, weather-permitting. We may occasionally meet on Zoom.
Every other Friday, March 21 - August 22, 2025 (12 sessions), 3-5 PM (ET)
Limited to 8
This six-month poetry journey will guide you through everything you need to know in order to feel more comfortable and confident about reading and writing poetry. Not everyone’s end-point is a book. Sometimes, you just want to learn the craft without the pressure of publishing, let alone producing a body of work that converses and coalesces. You want a solid grounding in the basics, not a lengthy and expensive MFA program.
Each leg of the journey will include ad-hoc readings, exercises, and prompts that will accrue over time to provide you with a deepened connection to, and understanding of, poetry. The more you participate, the more you will benefit. We will give each other a passport to go wherever the muse beckons, on a quest for poems that inspire, soothe, surprise, amuse, and yes, even sometimes confuse us.
This trip is not meant to be yet another task in our over-scheduled lives, but a respite from same—a holding space for our poet-selves to reset and be replenished. I recommend on-boarding for at least a month, but there’s a weekly option if you would prefer to begin your journey, as Lao Tzu said, with “a single step.”
Traditional critiques are not part of this journey, but we will trade process-notes, free-writes, struggles, breakthroughs and, of course, poems. Think of these sharing sessions more as conversations than critiques. Think of the journey as an alternative, and much more affordable, MFA residency.
Suitable for voyagers from virgin to seasoned, I warmly invite you to explore the outer banks of poetic possibility with me. Whether you join for one month or six, I can’t wait to travel with you!
Note: We will meet in-person at The Poetry Barn, weather-permitting. We may occasionally meet on Zoom.
Facilitator / tour guide
Lissa Kiernan
Lissa Kiernan is the multiple award-winning author of two books of poetry (The Whispering Wall, 2023 & Two Faint Lines in the Violet, 2014) and one of prose (Glass Needles & Goose Quills, 2017). Her individual poems have been widely published, anthologized, and nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart Prizes. She founded and directs The Poetry Barn, a pollinator habitat for poetry and AIM Higher, a nonprofit serving artists and writers. She holds her MFA from the Stonecoast Program in Creative Writing and her MA from The New School in New York City. Lissa lives in the Catskills near the Ashokan Reservoir spillway with her husband, Chris, and a fluctuating number of felines. In her leisure time, she enjoys forest-bathing, art-journaling, and playing the flute. Learn more at lissakiernan.com.
