Saturdays, November 7, 14, 21 & December 5, 2026, 1:00pm – 3:00pm
Meetings will take place in the Poetry Center's Alumni Room, Room 205; limit 12 students. General registration for Fall 2026 Classes & Workshops will open on Tuesday, August 25th at 10:00am.
Poets in every culture have been obsessed with wings since time immemorial. This hands-on generative poetry writing intensive calls participants to learn from, listen to and observe our bird relatives in writing poems of all sorts, McArthur Genius Fellow poet and ornithologer, J. Drew Lanham calls himself “a bird brain” who carries his “feel guide” into the field to find joy, inspiration and community by being among the birds. He is but one poet we study whose work confronts contemporary issues and flies on transformational wings. Other poets whose work we discuss include Amy Tan, Peggy Shumaker, Derek Sheffield, Elizabeth Bradfield, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Joy Harjo, Sandra Alcosser, Sean Hill, Camille Dungy, Linda Hogan, Simmon Buntin, Ada Limon and many more. One class incorporates a bird walk near the Poetry Center and an opportunity to meet the instructor at Sweetwater Bird Refuge for an extracurricular bird walk and poetry writing session. Each session includes in-class and outside-the-class writing as well as poetry prompts. Pamela Uschuk will write critical comments on all poems turned in by participants.