Wednesday, February 19th from 5:00PM to 7:00PM.

Just as a good documentary film raises questions and provokes thought, so too can a documentary poem. In fact, poet and scholar Jill Magi writes about the ways in which documentary film composition is a useful tool to understand how a poet’s framing of language can make an impact that reverberates long after its reading. In the first half of this class, we will read a few poems and discuss how each poet uses language as if it were a documentary film scene. Based on the models discussed, in the second half of the class, writers will generate their own poems. Come to class with a laptop, project ideas, and with any language from source text (newspapers, legal records, family diaries, images, et cetera) you may wish to include in a poem or poetic sequence.

Saturday, March 1st from 10:00AM to 12:00PM in the Poetry Center's Alumni Room.

In this generative writing session, we’ll write our lives as they exist in conversation with pop culture and mass media. We’ll start by reading some model texts (by artist-poets such as Tracie Morris, Divya Victor, Morgan Parker, and Chen Chen) to help us think about why and how and when a writer might engage with the screen. Then we’ll turn our curiosity toward a series of open-ended prompts for each of us to write into, both with and without “the TV on.” At the end of this time together we’ll each leave this session not only with plenty of our own in-class writing and some new replicable practices to build on, but with an additional packet of resources (poems, essays, and a prompt) to carry forward in front of the television screens of our choosing. This workshop is open to all, regardless of your relationship with writing or with the TV.

Wednesday, March 5th from 5:00PM to 7:30PM in the Poetry Center's Alumni Room.

Beginnings, middles, ends; sequences, interruptions, diversions, and circulation; stanzas, serials, circuits, and the stage of the page. Understanding narrative dynamics, movement, and arrangement is as important for poets as it is for fiction writers. 

In this class, we will take guidance from the Tamil practice of Kolam–an ancient and contemporary folk art of drawing on stoops and thresholds – to consider storytelling practices that evoke and sustain threshold spaces. We will read, with care and curiosity, texts by Myung Mi Kim, Bhanu Kapil, and M. NourbeSe Philip to suggest, together, how these poets have countered received notions of “plot” and “narrative arc” to invent other ways of storying through poetry. We will articulate our own thresholds that define and open us, and step out to what may be (or can become) our own ways of telling stories about what was, what is, and what is (or needs to) arrive. 

This class requires some preparation (reading) and a portion of this session will take place outdoors. Some of the practices may require bending, sitting on the ground, walking and standing. Those who need accommodations can reach out to the organizers and the class activities will be adapted to include writers of all bodyminds.

Saturday, March 8th from 9:30AM to 1:30PM in the Poetry Center's Alumni Room.

Class will be followed by a catered lunch by Tumerico and a presentation from a guest speaker from a local nonprofit organization. Lunch and presentation will be held from 12:30PM - 1:30PM.

Breathing offers a natural rhythm to our lives. The element of air seems invisible yet charges our every act, thought, and word. In the climate crisis, as inspiration meets expiration, the vulnerable act of breathing amplifies winds of change from polluted atmospheres to Black Lives Matter to COVID-19 to each life and death across the planet. In this writing workshop, we reimagine the presence of air in our words—poetry, nonfiction, fiction, between & beyond—breathing life into lines and sentences, paragraphs and poetics of place, retuning our basic rhythm of being alive. This generative workshop is the fourth in a seasonal series of workshops at the Poetry Center around natural elements to bridge ecologies.

This generative workshop is the fourth in a seasonal series of workshops at the Poetry Center around natural elements to bridge ecologies. The series is a sister effort to immersive short courses on Literary Ecologies taught by Gretchen at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Virginia. Participants can take one workshop by itself, or grow a practice of relational ecologies between places over time.

Thursday, May 15th from 5:00PM to 7:00PM in the Poetry Center's Alumni Room.

In this workshop we’ll explore various ways to get outside our heads in writing — to see if it’s possible to get beyond ourselves as a way of getting more serious about ourselves and our writing. To this end we’ll practice some guided zen meditation (to clear the heart and mind) and do some writing exercises designed to get us beyond what we usually think/see/feel into some other zone. (Following words themselves as smarter than we are). Norman will share some writing by and stories about his poetic mentor, Zen priest Beat poet Philip Whalen, and some of his own work, with discussion about strategies for producing such work. Bring a few of your favorite texts (prose or poetry) which we’ll use for our exercises, and a few of your favorite photographs. We’ll have time to share and discuss. Through guided meditation and through Zen-inspired writing exercises, participants can expect to leave class with new strategies for getting beyond the mental clutter and into a productive writing space.