Saturday, September 27, 10:00AM - 12:00PM in the Poetry Center's Alumni Room.

In this two-hour course, participants will craft a story based on a recent unpleasant encounter with a stranger. Students will write about these experiences, which we'll call Garden Variety Aggravation Incidents, as a practice template for eventually addressing other, more deeply traumatic stories. Students will practice and learn narrative and comedic techniques by writing their Garden Variety Aggravation Incident stories in a safe classroom environment.

Together, we will define the role of agency not only in traditional story structure but in the therapeutic re-telling of stories. Students will discover their motivation as protagonists in their stories: what they wanted during these tense moments and the actions they took. Next, we'll look at the role of humor in making emotionally-fraught stories easier to tell. We'll use the comedic techniques of nicknaming, roasting, and self-effacing irony.
 

Ultimately, we'll learn tools for cooling off those too-hot-to-handle emotional moments in our past, so that we can write well about hard times. We'll learn techniques for maintaining the emotional resonance of a trauma story without being overwhelmed by its pain. Students will leave the class with a 5-10 minute story they can tell to an audience or an 800-1200 word written narrative to submit for publication.

Wednesday, October 8th, 5:00PM - 7:00PM in the Poetry Center's Alumni Room.

How do we get from the beginning of a poem to the end? What strategies can we employ to streamline or complicate the journey? Traditionally, there have been four modes of poetry--lyric, narrative, meditative, and rhetorical--but contemporary poets often use these modes in combinations, rather than exclusively. The lyric concentrates on emotion, on music and image. Narrative poems move forward on plot. Meditative poems follow the track of the mind: using digression, self-interruption, and associate leaps. Rhetoric is the language of argument, of persuasion. In this seminar-style class we will consider these four main modes of poetry and their possible applications in our own work, reading and discussing poems by Jack Gilbert, Anne Carson, Eavan Boland, and Jorie Graham.

Saturday, October 11th, 10:00AM - 12:00PM in the Poetry Center's Alumni Room.

When I try to write about grief, I end up writing about horses galloping in never-ending circles, or rowing a glass-bottom boat across the surface of a sleeping monster, things that veer away from the reality of daily life. This workshop leans into this urge toward the surreal while writing under the influence of grief. It will explore some relationships between grief’s ruptures of a lived or shared reality & surrealism's non-logical & distorted experiences. We will discuss our own subjectively surreal phenomena of grief, & how the surreal might give voice to these griefs. We will explore writerly connections between grief & the surreal & do some writing together, guided by works by Bob Kaufman, Etel Adnan, Larry Levis, & Joyce Mansour, among others. By the end, I hope we'll have made new connections, come to some productive ideas, & written a few new things. This is a discussion-based, generative workshop with no advanced preparation needed; participants need bring only themselves & their openness & readiness to write. To be clear: I’m no sort of a grief counselor. I don’t presume to offer any answers or advice, or even solace. This workshop will forefront writing, & together we’ll see what happens through that.

Saturday, October 11, 2025, 4:45PM - 9:15PM at Kitt Peak National Observatory

Explore poetry and superbly dark night skies at 7,000 feet in this unique writing workshop focused on poetry and astronomy. During this special experience at Kitt Peak National Observatory — one of our nation’s astronomical treasures — we will learn about the groundbreaking scientific discoveries being made right here in Southern Arizona, while also considering the ecological, historical, and cultural contexts of the observatory. Throughout, we will read contemporary poems inspired by the universe and write our own poetic responses to what we encounter. After dark, we will observe the night sky, gaining a basic familiarity with the stars and constellations before observing celestial objects through a 20-inch telescope. We will continue to write throughout our observing time, taking notes and drafting new poems under red light to preserve our nighttime vision. Join us for this memorable evening of poetry, astronomy, and wonder in the Sky Islands. 

Kitt Peak Visitor Center is located at the end of route 386 on the Tohono O’odham Nation, 54 miles west of Tucson. Coming from Tucson, take route 86 (Ajo Way) west to the junction of 386. Make a left turn at the sign and follow the road to the top of the mountain. Please see this Google map for additional information and directions to Kitt Peak Visitor Center.

This program is unfortunately not ADA accessible due to the available telescope facilities. This program will involve walking approximately 0.5 miles, standing, and climbing stairs. Working service animals are welcome. Participants are asked to bring a beach/lawn/camping chair if they own one (this will allow us to pause and write in spectacular spots around the observatory campus!).

The program includes a light meal, and you may choose either a turkey (regular), or vegetarian or gluten-free sandwich. If you have dietary restrictions, you are welcome to bring your own meal. The kitchen cannot guarantee allergen-free, or otherwise specially prepared meals. The program fee is the same in either case.

Saturdays, October 18th, 25th, and November 1st, 1:00PM - 3:00PM in the Poetry Center's Alumni Room.

Protest poetry informs us about crisis, attempting to inspire change among human beings. This workshop, however, addresses an increasingly common variety of protest poetry that delivers its petitions for change to the more-than-human world. Class will look at several examples of such poetry and together discuss the stakes and audiences of prayers, spells, and incantations in particular. We'll look at what stylistic and structural elements help focus such a poem’s energy; and what social, environmental, and personal transformations the poets might have been seeking. Class members will have the chance to write two such poems, in response to optional writing prompts.

Wednesday, November 19th, 5:00PM - 7:00PM in the Poetry Center's Alumni Room.

This class will explore the idea that poetry should “make the strange familiar, and the familiar strange.” How does this happen and why is it important? How does something recognizable or mundane suddenly find itself charged with mystery? How does something wild and surreal feel immediately connected to our daily lives? At a glance, it might seem like I’m describing two very different types of poems: one invested in our ordinary world, the other reaching for the absurd. The real and the unreal. However, in each of these modes, the effect I’m describing is often achieved through similar means. Regardless of subject matter, these poems rely on the poet shifting the context through which we view the poem’s emotional or conceptual core. This will be a generative class where we’ll be writing together and will emerge from the session with the beginnings of several new poems.

Saturday, November 22nd, 10:00AM - 12:00PM in the Poetry Center's Alumni Room.

Poems need not end with an ascendant gesture to be as haunting and powerful as a poem that claims to affirm the human condition and assures us that we will rise above all of its circumstances. This class/lecture arises from a series of lectures on inspirational poetry, or what I call the Poetry of Agreements and literary poetry which I have sometimes referred to as the Poetry of Discomfort. Here, I will discuss where these types of poetries intersect but also where they differ in their aims. The almost insidiously persistent belief that a poem must hold an ascendant gesture keeps some poems that would hold awe, that would indeed meet the sublime, from doing so. Certainly, many incredible poems inspire, lift, raise, but there is so much else a poem can do. We will see what our own impulses are. Students can expect discussion on the course themes and to begin some in-class writing to be completed after the class ends.