Wednesday, February 28th, 2024, 5:00PM - 7:00PM

Meeting will take place in the Poetry Center's Alumni Room, Room 205; limit 12 students. SOLD OUT.

Much energy has been expended on how to begin a poem: writing practice, exercises, various other catalysts and temporary derangement. But once we have started and reached an impasse, how do we continue? How do we move through difficulties, and guide ourselves toward the strange, the familiar, the true? The late great singer Vic Chesnutt wrote that we are “Motorboating through our lives, only gradually gaining rudimentary/ Navigational skills And even sometimes offended by very friendly/ Lighthouses.” We’ll look at exemplary poems closely to illuminate some rudimentary navigational skills, and try them out. We’ll distinguish between friendly lighthouses and shiny, alluring disasters. We’ll discuss and enact all stages of the creative process, focusing especially on continuing, on revision and on completion. We’ll read together, write, and talk about how to continue as poets and artists in a culture inimical to privacy, difference, and the creative act of writing poetry and living as an artist. Come with a draft of a poem that is a single page or less, the rougher the better.