Financial Aid

Financial aid applications for Spring 2024 classes are now closed. 

Please note that our financial aid application process has been improved and expanded. 

The Arnold Greenfield Financial Aid program now provides four full, need-based awards to community members to cover tuition for a course offered through the Poetry Center's Classes & Workshops program. Four full awards  are awarded each term (fall, spring, and summer). The Poetry Center is grateful for this generous financial support of poets and writers in our Southern Arizona community.

Who is Eligible

Any community member with financial need is eligible to apply with the exception of Poetry Center employees and interns. The award must be used during the season for which it was conferred. You need only attest to financial need: i.e., the inability to pay a course's tuition without financial strain. Financial aid is awarded by lottery and may be applied to any course a recipient wishes.

How to Apply

The window for Spring 2024 financial aid opportunities will open December 5th, 2023 at 10:00 AM local time and close December 11th, 2023 at 5:00PM. Apply here. 

There is a simple, free online application managed via the user-friendly electronic submissions manager Submittable, through which our course registration process is also managed. You will be asked for your contact information, a declaration of need, and your course preference.

Four qualified applicants are selected at random and notified, by email or telephone, in advance of the course's open registration date. At that time they will be manually enrolled in the courses they choose. 

Applicants not selected will also receive notification in advance of course registration.

Please be in touch with any questions or concerns: valenzuela9@arizona.edu

Arnold Greenfield

Arnold Greenfield was born in Philadelphia in 1946. A creative writing course in his senior year of high school sparked an interest in poetry which continued throughout his lifetime.

A true lover of the arts, he apprenticed in his teens as a jewelry maker with a Philadelphia silversmith and continued to pursue his interest in jewelry making through and after his college years. He studied classical guitar and like many of his generation soon turned his attention to folk music.

Poetry remained his abiding love, and he graduated with a degree in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1968.

Ever the romantic, Arnold took the "European tour" several years after college, fell in love with a French woman, Danielle, as she emerged from a Paris metro stop, and fulfilled his dream of living on the left Bank of Paris. There Arnie continued his love of Danielle and writing, while teaching English as a second language.

Arnie was unfortunately diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis when he was 27 and died of the disease years later.

His funeral was held in Père Lachaise Cemetery where we hope some of his ashes may have drifted off and brushed the graves of the many writers Arnie admired so much during in his lifetime.