This workshop is restricted to K-12 classroom teachers.

Emily Dickinson may have wondered how best to define her craft when she wrote, “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” In this class we will attempt to define poetry for ourselves through a close study of craft—metaphor, image, voice, narrative, etc.—in an effort to figure out what a poem is and what it can do. As teachers we know that the best way to become better writers is to read, and so we will read deeply a variety of poets from the western and non-western literary tradition, including Gwendolyn Brooks, Fadhil Al Azzawi, Emily Dickinson and Rumi. These masters will serve as our guides in the writing of our own weekly poems and as the foundation for class discussion. By the end of class we will have read deeply, discussed poetic craft and technique, and created our own body of work. We will—figuratively—have our heads taken off.