Online registration for this course now available here.
Taught by Thomas Sayers Ellis
Saturday, November 1
10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. (with an hour lunch break)
Tuition: $50
Most poets write from some aspect of experience or witness, often crafting poems that tell stories broken into lines and sprinkled with poetic devices such as similes and metaphors. In this workshop, we will concentrate on identifying the central energy of the line and riffing it, and worrying it, and weaving a composition of alert meaning and music around it (in the same way Impressionism works in painting via visual fragmentation), until an inner schema and pattern emerges and the poem is able to stand on its own unique, verse-reversing, paged-feet. Our goal is to engage the poetic impulse in its purest, non-referential form.
In the workshop, we will look at poems and listen to poems from a range of “anonymous” poets so as not to concentrate on the cult of author. We will practice, via in-class exercises, the art of making poetry all the time. Participants should bring to class a poem they have recently written or are currently writing.