Throughout history, some poets have felt a moral or ethical imperative to bear witness in their poetry to events such as war, genocide, racism, corporate greed, dictatorial tyranny, and other acts of injustice. In this week-long workshop, we will study ways in which several 20th and 21st century poets have borne witness. Participants will read poems by Langston Hughes, Pablo Neruda, Carolyn Forché, Sam Hamill, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Yehuda Amichai, Charles Simic, Richard Jackson, Nazim Hikmet, Dennis Brutus, César Vallejo, Anna Akhmatova, Joy Harjo, Demetria Martínez, Baron Wormser, Francisco X. Alarcón, and others. Workshop participants will be given writing exercises at each workshop meeting to generate their own poems of witness on topics of their choosing.