*General registration at this link is closed.

Class Meetings: Six consecutive Saturday afternoons, July 15 to August 19, from 1-3pm, in the Poetry Center Conference Room 207.

This six-week studio class, led by a long-serving member of the Poetry Center’s library staff, will function as a hands-on laboratory for poetry. Each week will feature a variety of “lab stations” where we’ll generate poems in response to brief prompts based on items from the Poetry Center’s collections, including text, visual, and audiovisual resources. The lab stations will be designed to focus on specific poetic techniques, encourage playful experimentation, and expand our ideas about poetic practice. Concepts may include, but are not limited to, lineation practice, ekphrasis (writing based on art), collaborative writing techniques, poetic imitations, and experiments with rhyme. Stations will rotate each week, though popular stations may be repeated on demand; the instructor will solicit participant input on station topics throughout the course.

Participants will have the opportunity to generate new work every week; to interact extensively with Poetry Center library collections under the guidance of a trained librarian; to share work with other students; and to respond informally to others’ work (in both discussion and creative responses/imitations). This course will also include an opportunity to conference with the instructor to receive more detailed feedback outside of class.

The Poetry Lab is open to writers at all levels who want to generate new work and add to their writing toolboxes in a spirit of play, free experimentation, and inquiry.