This course will focus on the personal and political landscapes of one’s imagination. Participants will explore poetry drawn from memory and history—both oral and recorded. Writing exercises will be designed to map a personal geography. Writers will discover language that’s clear, concrete, and appealing to the senses. Each participant will find new ways to draw from lived experience and imagination to create vivid poems. We’ll write a poem in each workshop session. Some of the poets and poems we’ll read: Denise Chávez, Richard Rodriguez, Martín Espada, Luis J. Rodriguez, and María Meléndez.

Suggested text: María Meléndez, How Long She’ll Last in This World. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2006.