The Gathering

Saturday Sept 5, 10am-noon ET

Diana Whitney - Nature and Desire: A Workshop for Poets and Curious Prose Writers 

Desire is a force that can spark creative inspiration, propel our writing forward, and rivet our readers. So how can we find new ways to articulate desire in our work? In this generative workshop, we’ll mine the natural world for images and language that embody desire in all its forms– not just hunger for a beloved, but longing—for connection, for transformation, for youth, for self-love, for a just world. We’ll start by exploring poems by writers who draw on nature to add texture, intensity, and emotional depth to their work; then we’ll use their lines as prompts to spark our own writing.

Saturday Sept 5, 2-4pm ET

Nancy Miller Gomez - Excavating Memories

Why do certain memories stay with us? I believe if we’ve held onto a memory (from this morning, or last week or years and years ago) there must be a reason for it lingering on in our minds. Those are the memories/images/experiences that can be explored for opportunities. Which ones hold enough emotional charge to become poems? Which still carry feelings that have lodged in our bodies, feelings of shame or regret or gratitude? One moment, one decision, one thing we’ve said or had said to us, one action taken or not taken. One terrifying or beautiful experience can become an indelible part of who we are.

We’ll look at some poems that were developed from a memory and then sift through our own memories to harvest a few that might want to grow into poems.

Sunday Sept 6, 10am-noon ET

Kelli Russell Agodon - The Beautiful Human Mess: Writing Poems with Vulnerability & Surprise

What happens when we let surprise and our humanness into our work? In this workshop, we’ll explore how to write the poems we need to write in a supportive, low-pressure space that honors both risk and care. We’ll look at how humor, wordplay, and surprise can deepen your poem rather than distract from emotional truth. A surprising image, a moment of absurdity, or an unexpected turn can disarm the reader, creating an opening into material that might otherwise feel too heavy or too difficult to approach--it may also help the writer as well! We’ll also talk about what you’re afraid to say (and why), and how poems can become artful containers for the deeper, more complicated parts of our lives. Participants will leave with new drafts and a stronger sense of how to write into vulnerability with openness, curiosity, and trust as well as—how to write the poems you didn’t know you were allowed to (or needed to) write.

Sunday Sept 6, 2-4pm ET

Alvy Carragher - Recovering Broken Poems By Going Deep With Detail

Together, we’ll explore how to rejuvenate poems not by cutting them back, but by expanding them: adding texture, specificity, and emotional depth. Through close readings of poems by Paula Meehan, Brendan Kennelly, and Marie Howe, we’ll pay attention to the kinds of details that make a poem feel indelible and fully inhabited. Then we’ll return to your drafts with new strategies for reentering the poem’s world, deepening its details, and discovering what’s still unsaid. This workshop is for poets who are ready to see what happens when they expand rather than cut back when redrafting. Participants should bring some old drafts to work on. It will work best if these are poems you’re genuinely looking to improve and you’ve frustrated your usual strategies. You should also have plenty of paper and a pen on hand, or a device to write with. Before we finish, we will make time to attempt a brand new draft that focuses on using details to build a poem from a simple question. In this generative revision workshop, you’re invited to bring 2 (or more, if you’d like to have a choice of materials to work with) “stuck” poem drafts: pieces that feel flat, unfinished, or not quite alive.

Monday Sept 7, 10am-noon ET

David Kirby - And Then What Happened? The Longer Narrative Poem

A lot of today’s poetry falls into one of two categories. First there’s the word salad poem, which doesn’t make sense, but that just means the poet’s a genius and you’re not because you don’t understand what you just read, you dummy. The second kind is the lunchbox note, a short, obvious poem that’s just smeary enough (did your thermos leak?) to let you know it’s art. Why not try a third type of poem, the longer narrative? That approach worked for Homer and Milton—why not you? You don’t have to write 14,000+ lines the way Dante did in The Divine Comedy, but a three- or four-pager might be just the kind of challenge you’re looking for. Your teacher will lead you through the title poem of his book Talking About Movies with Jesus (LSU Press, 2011) as well as his forthcoming John Wilkes Booth’s Dream and Other Nightmares (Hanging Loose Press, 2027) and show you how to get started on your own epic. All you have to do is remember the question you asked when you were a kid and someone was reading to you and you wanted to know, “And then what happened?”