This is an online workshop for K-12 educators and staff that takes place via Zoom

Educators can earn up to 12 CPE credit hours

Form & Song: Exploring the Musicality of Poems and how Poetry Can Convey Song

What happens when a poem starts to sing? How does a song become a kind of poem we carry in our bodies before we ever write it down? In this six-week generative workshop for educators, we explore the deep kinship between poetry and music—two art forms rooted in rhythm, voice, pattern, and feeling. Together, we’ll listen closely to the beats inside language, the melodies hidden in metaphor, and the emotional chords struck by a powerful line.

In this six-week course we will look to other lyric poets such as: Patricia Smith, Harryette Mullen, Tyembia Jess, Jamila Woods, Gil-Scott Heron, and more who will guide us through our own exploration and play. Through reading, listening, and writing, participants will learn how tone, tempo, repetition, silence, and sound shape both poems and songs. Each week blends poetic craft with musical sensibility: the lyric as chorus, the stanza as verse, the line break as a rest, the poem as score. We’ll study poets who borrow from jazz, hip-hop, blues, classical, and folk traditions—and musicians who write like poets without ever calling themselves writers.