From star-studded intensives at Kitt Peak National Observatory to transcendent classes exploring grief, the uncanny, the strange, and the surreal, this is a season of classes you won't want to miss!
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Saturday, September 27, 10:00 AM — 12:00 PM
Using Agency and Comedy to Write About Trauma
with Molly McCloy
Beginning with “Garden Variety Aggravation Incidents” and moving towards more deeply traumatic stories, this class dives into narrative and comedic techniques that allow us to tell emotionally-fraught stories.
Wednesday, October 8, 5:00 PM — 7:00 PM
Four Modes: Propulsions and Little Engines
with Richard Siken
How do we get from the beginning of a poem to the end? Learn to use four modes—lyric, narrative, meditative, and rhetorical—in propulsive combinations.
Saturday, October 11, 10:00 AM — 12:00 PM
Grief & the Surreal
with Mathias Svalina
In this class, we'll explore the relationships between grief’s ruptures of a lived or shared reality & surrealism's non-logical & distorted experiences.
Saturday, October 11, 4:45 PM – 9:15 PM
The Poetic Sky (at Kitt Peak National Observatory)
with Julie Swarstad Johnson
Explore poetry and superbly dark night skies at 7,000 feet in this unique writing workshop focused on poetry and astronomy. We will observe the night sky, and write our own poetic responses to what we encounter.
Saturdays, October 18, 25, and November 1, 1:00 PM — 3:00 PM
Uncanny Activisms: Poems as Spells, Curses, Prayers, Incantations, and Blessings
with Cynthia Hogue
Protest poetry informs us about crisis, attempting to inspire change among human beings. We'll look at what stylistic and structural elements help focus such a poem’s energy; and what social, environmental, and personal transformations the poets might have been seeking—before writing our own.
Wednesday, November 19, 5:00 PM — 7:00 PM
Strangeness, Oddities, and Defamiliarization
with Matthew Olzmann
How does something recognizable or mundane suddenly find itself charged with mystery? How does something wild and surreal feel immediately connected to our daily lives? In this generative class, we will emerge with poems that “make the strange familiar, and the familiar strange.”
Saturday, November 22, 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Look Up, The Sky Is Falling: Ascendant and Descendant Gestures in the Poem
with Vievee Francis
Many incredible poems inspire, lift, raise, but there is so much else a poem can do. From "Poetry of Agreements" to "Poetry of Discomfort," we will learn to wield different types of poetic aims, and then discover what our own impulses are.
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Register now
General Registration is now open!