Decades ago, Lyn Coffin was on the SLAM team Ann Arbor sent to the National competition in Austin, Texas. She was inspired by the many great performance poems she heard and has a deep love of performance poetry, as well as “academic” or formal poetry. Almost the entire class will be devoted to workshopping the […]

Given all the assumptions we tend to bring to biology, a consideration of the queerness in nature has drawn the attention of many poets. From Bruce Snider’s recent work, such as “After Reading the Wikipedia Entry on Homosexual Behavior in Moths” to Natalie Diaz’s gorgeous river verse in Postcolonial Love Poem, which as a collection […]

CLASS FULL

Are you a painter, photographer, cartoonist, sculptor AND poet? What are the possibilities and pitfalls of inviting your own visual art to rest alongside poetry? How can image and text sing, complicate, harmonize with and not merely repeat one another? From broadsides to haibun to erasures to other pairings, we’ll examine and explore how the […]

I believe that empathy is one of the most powerful ingredients found in the creative act of writing. In this spirit we will visit the celebratory form of odes: briefly look at its history, read some examples from Neruda and others, and write one ourselves though not to a Grecian Urn but instead to a perceived enemy.

In this revision workshop, participants will discuss the specifics of the nebulous and idiosyncratic practice of revision. Together, we will examine a published poem in its nascent and then its mature state and discuss the types of changes authors make. Afterward, participants will be led through a revision exercise that invites them to read and re-see syntax, line, diction, sonic texture, redundancy, and content. Participants will need to arrive with some works in progress.

CLASS FULL

Poetry and hybrid forms often circle around the space between the lines, what’s underneath the surface. In this workshop, we will consider the breath in our writing via a consideration of the white space and line break in our writings.