Wednesday, June 3rd, 5:30pm – 7:30pm
Meeting will take place in the Poetry Center's Alumni Room, Room 205; limit 12 students.
This generative workshop invites poets and prose writers to use archival thinking as a way into new work. When I say archive, I mean anything that preserves a trace: documents, photographs, lists, news items, family stories, and objects. Through brief readings, discussion, and guided prompts, participants will write from found material and explore how voice, omission, and form can transform what we inherit. No prior experience with archival research is required.
Wednesday, June 10th and 17th, 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM
Meetings will take place in the Poetry Center's Alumni Room, Room 205; limit 12 students.
Grief and loss are universal human experiences and our most beloved, as well as complicated, relationships are forever changed by death. This workshop brings continuing bonds theory, sympathetic magic, and creative practice together to better understand our ongoing relationships to those we’ve lost; We will direct our attention and intention towards finding connection and meaning through physical objects, small acts, symbols, or ritual, which all act as conduits between this realm and the next. Through storytelling, writing, collage, and bookmaking we’ll consider new ways one might (re)connect and continue building or deepening relationships with an ancestor of your choosing. Come ready with (copies of) personal texts, imagery, and photos that you’ll incorporate into handmade books, transforming precious memories into a multi-sensory way to "hold" those or what’s been lost while tending to your grief. No bookmaking experience necessary and all materials provided.
Wednesday, July 29th, 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM
Meeting will take place in the Poetry Center's Alumni Room, Room 205; limit 12 students.
From roots to trunks, leaves to cones, trees uphold living libraries across the Earth. How do you read and write with trees? Forests communicate underground, grow canopies that shelter biodiverse species, and oxygenate the atmosphere that we breathe. In this writing workshop, we reimagine the presence of wood in our words—poetry, nonfiction, fiction, between & beyond—rooting and branching between lines and sentences, paragraphs and poetics of place, reconnecting heartwood with our own hearts. The human imagination seeks relational structures, from family trees to linguistic and evolutionary systems, along with practices like shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing. Any tree—a maple or palo verde, juniper or cedar, redwood to ironwood to pine—can be a teacher to root us in place. As forest fires, bark beetles, and climate changes threaten these living libraries, let’s try to read the forest AND the trees.
This generative workshop continues Gretchen’s series of eco-writing workshops at the Poetry Center and elsewhere around “Relational Ecologies: Writing with a More-than-Human World.” For this workshop, we are fortunate to be gathering in Tucson, associated with the birthplace of dendrochronology: the dating and study of tree rings.
Thursday, July 30th, 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM
Meeting will take place in the Poetry Center's Alumni Room, Room 205; limit 12 students.
In this workshop, we’ll explore the ekphrastic approach traditionally and in reverse as it happened with our Arctic Circle Residency collaboration. We’ll discuss examples of poetry, essays, and photography that engage with climate change and ecological impact. We encourage attendees to come with a photograph, picture of an artwork, or even an article related to climate change that you’d like to focus on for some generative writing. If you’re a visual artist, please bring a climate/ecological poem you’d like to engage with for concept/planning writing. We’ll set aside time for discussion and sharing snippets of drafts at the end of our session. This class is open to poets, visual artists, and anyone interested in exploring the relational aspects between artistic mediums. Regardless of your preferred medium, participants can expect to leave the class with new draft work and ideas for future projects.
Wednesday, August 19, 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM
Meeting will take place in the Poetry Center's Alumni Room, Room 205; limit 12 students.
How does a poem make sense? Not every poem follows the linear logic of prose—instead, poetry often moves by emotional logic, associative leaps, and intuitive connections that feel right even when they don't "make sense" on paper. In this generative workshop, we'll explore how successful poems balance literal coherence with emotional truth, examining works that make audacious logical leaps while still feeling grounded and earned. Through close reading and writing exercises, participants will practice identifying where a poem needs more logical scaffolding and where it needs to trust its emotional instincts. Writers at all levels are welcome; come ready to read, write, and rethink what it means for a poem to "make sense."