COURSE ARCHIVE

Please browse the descriptions of courses we have offered in past seasons. Recent seasons include:

Summer 2025

• The Art of the Japanese Haibun with Katherine Larson
• Visualizing the Poem: Poetry Maps with Joni Wallace
• Writing Tucson: Intersecting Place, Prose and Poetry with Estella González

Spring 2025

• The Poetic Imaginarium: How Language is the Ultimate Teacher with Wendy Videlock
• Geopoetics: Reading & Writing at Planetary Scale with Kathy Wu
• The Illusion of Surface: Writing Deep into Place with Kimberly Blaeser
• Filmmaking on the Page: A Documentary Poetry Workshop with Niki Herd
• Writing with the Television On with Hannah Ensor
• Thresholds: Narrative for those who Live and Work in the Betweens, Borders, and Boundaries with Divya Victor
• Writing with Air: Finding Form in a Polluted World with Gretchen E. Henderson
• Zen and the Art of Writing Out of Our Heads with Norman Fischer

Fall 2024

• Fold Poetry In: A Generative Poetry Workshop with Mark Wunderlich
• (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals with CAConrad
• What is Mythopoesis? with Cynthia Hogue
• Daily Poetics, Daily Practice with Brandon Som
• Against Disease: The Poetry of Resilience with Pamela Uschuk
• Writing with Earth: Finding Form in an Uprooted World with Gretchen E. Henderson
• The Notebook with Roger Reeves

SUMMER 2024

• What’s a Book, Anyway? with Charles Alexander
• Writing Tucson: Intersecting Place, Prose and Poetry with Estella González
• The Technology of Surprise: Haiku, Haibun, and collaborative poetry play with Dana Levin

SPRING 2024

• Writing With Fire: Finding Form in a Burning World with Gretchen E. Henderson
• Only My Voice, Like A Flute: A Poetry Workshop on Grief (and Praise!) with Edgar Kunz
• An Ecopoetics Sampler Course with Brenda Hillman
• Very Friendly Lighthouses, or How to Continue with Matthew Zapruder
• The Art of the Remix: A Crash Course in Radical Revision with John Murillo
• Staying Outside: Strategies in Honor of "Difficult" Work with Saretta Morgan
• Scores for the Desert Future with Kimi Eisele

fall 2023

• The Seductions of Voice with Paisley Rekdal. 
• Poetry and the Unconscious with Yanyi
• Stop Making Sense with Timothy Donnelly
• Everyone's Poetry Workshop with Eileen Myles
• Writing with Water: Finding Form in a Thirsty World with Gretchen E. Henderson
• Ecstatic Miniatures: A Generative Workshop Exploring the Delights of Writing Short Verse Plays with Manuel Paul López
• Different Vessels, Different Meanings: Shaping Poetry Through Shape with Adam O. Davis
• Whitman's Long-Line Verse: An Appreciation with Marilyn Chin
• Locating the Self: Intertextual Poetic Strategies with Charif Shanahan

SUMMER 2023

• The Art of the Poetry Chapbook with Brooke Sahni
• Prose Poems and the Art of Disguise with Justin Petropoulos
• Radical Intimacies: Attempts & Experiments of Many Starts with Angel Dominguez

SPRING 2023

• Deep Listening & Sounding with Roberto Tejada
• Documentary Poetics v. American History: Beyond Critical Race Theory to See Reality with Tyehimba Jess
• Arranging a Manuscript with Joan Larkin
• Tangling with Humanity, Earth & The Universe with Juan Felipe Herrera
• Seeing is Believing: Drafting the Lasting Image with Nicole Sealey
• Some Varieties of Poetic Experience with Jane Hirshfield
• THROUGH THE ASH, NEW LEAVES…LYRIC POETRY FORMS ADDRESSING THE CLIMATE CRISIS with Pam Uschuk

FALL 2022

• Ecopoetics: A Writer's Way of Knowledge with Lorna Dee Cervantes 
• Political Lyric with Aria Aber
• The Poetics of the Future with Shayla Lawz
• Refuse to be Done: Rewriting and Revision at Every Stage with Matt Bell.
• Gained in Translation: Sandra Cisneros and Liliana Valenzuela on the useful joys of translation for poets and translators
• Learning from Whitman with Mark Doty

SUMMER 2022

• Free Time: Building a Community of Mentors for Incarcerated Writers with Joe Watson 
• A Borderless Poetic with Anthony Cody
• Lush Desert: Writing Contradiction, Juxtaposition and Metaphor with Logan Phillips

SPRING 2022

• Free Time: Building a Community of Mentors for Incarcerated Writers with Joe Watson 
• Literary Translation for Everyone with Kelsi Vanada
• Word-hoards and the Lure of the World with Kimberly Johnson
• Reaching toward the Edge -- Love Poems and Boundaries with Donika Kelly

FALL 2021

• Free Time: Building a Community of Mentors for Incarcerated Writers with Joe Watson 
• Just Say It with Ted McLoof
• Engagement in Poetry/Engaged Poetry with Javier Zamora
• Senses Working Overtime with Luis Alberto Urrea
• Writing the Future: Climate Change, the Pandemic and Beyond with Pam Uschuk
• Little Rooms Anywhere: The 21st Century American Sonnet with Carl Marcum

SPRING 2021 (VIA THE SHIPMAN AGENCY)

• Free Time: Building a Community of Mentors for Incarcerated Writers with Joe Watson 
• Craft Seminar: It Doesn’t Matter What You Choose with Sheila Heti
• The Architecture of Story: the basic dramatic principles with Sunil Yapa 
• Craft Seminar: Writing the Poem No One Wants to Read (and You Definitely Don't Want to Write) with Patricia Smith 
• Staging the Poem with Tess Taylor 
• Remix and Making Poems New – A Revision Workshop with DaMaris Hill  
• Meaningful Machines: Introduction to Digital Poetry with Lillian-Yvonne Bertram

FALL 2020 (VIA THE SHIPMAN AGENCY)

• Free Time: Building a Community of Mentors for Incarcerated Writers with Joe Watson
• Craft Seminar: Meaningful Machines – An Introduction to Digital Poetry with Lillian-Yvonne Bertram 
• Craft Seminar: How to Write an Essay Collection with Alexander Chee 
• Workshop: Poetry Sequences with Roy G. Guzmán
• Craft Seminar: What is Style? with Garth Greenwell
• Workshop: Chapbook Design by Hand – Combining Image + Text with Hilary Lorenz 
• Craft Seminar: Tug-of-War – On Form in Free Verse Poetry with Carl Phillips
• Master Class: Sorrow for Our Songs – A Study of Lament with Tess Taylor 

SPRING 2020 (SOME CLASSES SHORTENED OR CANCELED DUE TO COVID-19)

• Free Time: Building a Community of Mentors for Incarcerated Writers with Joe Watson
• Poems as Urgent Speech with Joan Larkin
• Wild Tales: Writing Lyric Nature / Eco Essays with Pam Uschuk
• Breaching the Boundary: Breaking Out of Form and the Fourth Wall in Poetry with Tiana Clark
• The Poetics of Resilience with Monica Sok
• What is Mythopoesis? with Cynthia Hogue
• Writing Well: Essay as Self Help with Dorian Rolston
• Writing Marrow: HEART. SOUL. SPIRIT. ESSENCE. SUBSTANCE. CENTER. with Denise Chávez

FALL 2019

• Free Time: Building a Community of Mentors for Incarcerated Writers with Joe Watson
• Engagement in Poetry/ Engaged Poetry with Javier Zamora
• Food is Connected to Everything: Writing the Culinary Essay with Wren Awry
• Picture Books: Writing Children’s Stories for a Competitive Market with Stephanie Pearmain
• About Our Ancestors: The Poetics of Postmemory with Brandon Shimoda
• Lyric Essays: Experiments with Found and Invented Forms with Katherine Larson

SPRING 2019

• Free Time: Building a Community of Mentors for Incarcerated Writers with Joe Watson
• Laughing in the Dark, with Charlie Buck
• The Shape of Water: Turbulence & Flow in the Personal Essay, with Marin Sardy
• Better Poetry Through Algebra: OULIPO & Unlimited Poetry, with Adam O. Davis
• Writing the Wild: A Poetry Intensice, with Pamela Uschuk
• Ekphrastic Poetry Workshop, with Maurya Simon

FALL 2018

• Under the Skin: An Exploration of Autotheory, with Ari Zwartjes
• Reading and Writing the Poetry of Witness, with Cynthia Hogue
• Flash Fiction: Writing the Short-Short Story, with Dana Diehl
• Beyond Landscape: Writing Where You Are (Or Aren’t), with Sarah Gzemski
• Poetry as Matrix w/ Sarah Vap

SPRING 2018

• Occult Poetics, with CA Conrad
• Cauterizing Wounds: Writing to Heal, with Pam Uschuk
• To Make a Human Thing, with Ada Limón
• Persona, Archetypes, + Exposure: Writing the Complicated Self, with Kati Standefer
• Narrowing the Distance: Prison + the Outside, with Joe Watson
• Creativity Lab: Generating Writing through Sensory Engagement, with Lisa O’Neill

FALL 2017

• Literature of the Borderlands, with Francisco Cantú
• What Is an Image to Do: Using Your Body to Read a Poem, with Jorie Graham
• Revisioning, with Laura Maher
• Music As Source, with Dan Kruse
• Physical Em(body)ment of Language, with Layli Long Soldier
• Rewriting Our Family Stories, with Danielle Geller

SUMMER 2017

• The Art of Genre in Short Fiction, with Ted Mcloof
• The Poetics of Lived Experience: A Writing Workshop, with Steven Alvarez
• Poetry Lab, with Sarah Kortemeier
• When We Dead Awaken: Reading Adrienne Rich, with Jane Miller

SPRING 2017

• Disorienting the Essay: Finding Form in Personal Nonfiction, with Katherine E. Standefer
• Ecopoetics & Your Next Poem: A Weekend Workshop, with Brenda Hillman
• Outsider Literature: Writing from the Urgent Edges, with Robert Snyderman
• Documentary Storytelling in Prose, with Lisa O’Neill 
• Writing Resistance and Recovery, with Hoa Nguyen
• Oracular Writing: Living Images, with Annie Guthrie

FALL 2016

• Beyond Measure: Experiments in the Music of Poetry, with Samuel Ace
• Writing Past Pain and Into Possibility, with Camille Dungy
• The Art of the Chapbook, with Joni Wallace
• Writing the Wild: A Weekend Intensive, with Pam Uschuk
• Nonfiction as Reconstruction, with Francisco Cantú

SUMMER 2016

• Are We There Yet? Pacing and Payoff in Narrative Verse, with Adrian Matejka
• The Deepened Image, with Christopher Nelson
• Screenwriting: The Basics, with Ted McLoof
• Collaboration Playvacation, with Hannah Ensor

SPRING 2016

• Mode in Poems, with Natasha Sajé
• Compositional Improvisation as Poetic Practice, with Kimi Eisele and TC Tolbert
• Radiance: Where Is the Poem Going? with Kimiko Hahn
• Finding Form: Inventions, Inversions, and Eliminations in Hybrid Construction, with Khadijah Queen
• Lyric Complexity: A Craft Class, with David Baker
• Oracular Writing: Transduction, with Annie Guthrie

FALL 2015

• The Telling Itself: Illness Narratives as Healing and Craft, with Katherine E. Standefer
• The Art of the Chapbook, with Joni Wallace
• Moving with the Body of the Text: A Translation Workshop, with Rebecca Seiferle
• Climate Change & Poetry, with Eric Magrane
• Intertextual Poetics: Writing Into and Through Texts, with Kristi Maxwell

SUMMER 2015

• Parent/Child Writing Summit, with Mason Gates
• Clarity Demystified: A Poetry Workshop, with Christopher Nelson
• Cut to the Chase: Creating Plot in Fiction, with Ted McLoof
• Dislocating the Prose Poem: A Generative Workshop and Survey, with Jamison Crabtree
• Shaping Text with Letterpress, with Amanda Beekhuizen
• The Art of Research: Collaging the Personal Essay, with Aisha Sabatini Sloan
• The Fact of Fiction: Turning Life into Story, with Ted McLoof

SPRING 2015

• The Poem Sequence, with Rebecca Seiferle
• Animals in Poems: Reading and Writing Poems of Creatures Real and Imagined, with Simmons Buntin
• Aligning Structure in Ecopoetics, with Sherwin Bitsui
• Where I'm From: Mapping the Geography and Topography of Our Homelands, with Lisa O'Neill
• Reclaiming Women's Writing, with Annie Finch
• Rhythms of the Spirit, with Annie Finch

FALL 2014

• The Parent-Child Summit, with Mason Gates
• Oracular Writing: Foraging, with Annie Guthrie
• Poetry and the Photograph: Ekphrasis and Beyond, with Samuel Ace
• Finding the Fragment in the Complete Thought, with Thomas Sayers Ellis

SUMMER 2014

• Conventions of Short Fiction, with Ted McLoof
• Imitation: From Faux to Freedom, with Christopher Nelson
• Choosing a Voice: Making Letterpress Posters, with Amanda Beekhuizen
• In the Silence a Collective, Maximally: Erasure and its Ghosts, with Farid Matuk
• Short Poems, with Zachary Schomburg

SPRING 2014

• Line by Line: A Close Reading Workshop, with Sarah Kortemeier
• The New York School of Poets, with Will Cordeiro
• The Autobiographical Eye, with Beth Alvarado
• Bloodstone Quarries of the Spleen, with CAConrad
• The Interior Journey: Reading and Writing as Spiritual Practice, with Fenton Johnson

FALL 2013

• Craft of Poetry, with Sarah Kortemeier
• Ekphrastic Poetry, with Joni Wallace
• Robert Duncan: Circles of Influence, with Charles Alexander
• The Craft of Fiction, with Karen Brennan
• Hybrid Writing: Crossing Prose with Poetry, with Brian Blanchfield

SUMMER 2013

• Surrealist Writing, with Matthew Rotando
• Poetry in Letterpress Print, with Alice Vinson
• Writing Your Gods and Demons, with Christopher Nelson

SPRING 2013

• Oracular Writing: Mapping, with Annie Guthrie
• Poetic Prose and the Prose Poem, with Barbara Henning
• A Weekend of One’s Own, with Pamela Uschuk
• Poetics of the Body and Disability, with Lisa C. Cole
• Poetry in Bloom, with Simmons Buntin
• Writing at Degree Zero, with Norman Fischer
• Listening to Sound Poetry, with John Melillo        

FALL 2012

• Correspondences, with Brandon Shimoda
• Constraint-Based Writing, with Kristi Maxwell                                               
• Master's Level Poetry Workshop, with Barbara Cully                              
• Poemfilms and the Moving Image, with Annie Guthrie and Jonathan Van Ballenberghe    
• Happy Accidents: Improvisation for Writers, with Sarah Kortemeier
• Mixed Media Artist’s Books: Working, with Text with Beata Wehr               
• Postmodernism as Poetic, with Michael Rerick