“I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.”—Robert Frost
In this workshop, we will focus on the balance of specificity and surprise that drives poetry. As a class we’ll consider the following: how does a poem evolve, and how does it evolve for me as the writer? We will read contemporary poets to learn and shape our own sense of individual voice and deepen our sense of poetic draft. This class uses the writer’s workshop method: participants will write original poetry, bring in their finished drafts for feedback from their peers, and then approach revisions of their work. As a class, we will also participate in short writing exercises weekly. These experiments in voice, structure and form will then be used to spark class discussion and to assist you with creating new work. The goal of this class is to help you become a more nuanced writer, using the collaborative and dynamic setting of the writer’s workshop.