The Poetry Center is offering a free bus ride to the Amerind Museum in Dragoon, Arizona for a reading with Natalie Diaz & Leanne Betasamosake Simpson on Wednesday, April 1st! Bus seats are limited and available on a first come, first served basis. 

Wednesday, March 25, 2026, 5:00PM - 7:00PM

Meeting will take place in the Poetry Center's Alumni Room, Room 205; limit 12 students.

In this class, we will explore the history of two literary forms, emanating from different parts of the world: the sonnet and the ghazal. We will discuss their rules and evolution through the ages, and, in the ghazal’s case, across languages. We will read ghazals by Shadab Zeest Hashmi, Agha Shahid Ali, and Mimi Khalvati, and sonnets by Terrance Hayes, Hieu Minh Nguyen, and Carl Phillips. We will ask: What makes a sonnet a sonnet? What makes a ghazal a ghazal? How can the constraint of form liberate us, allowing for creative poetic leaps?