What gives texture, momentum, and character to a poem? Together we focus on drafting and revising new work while exploring key elements of the craft: dynamics of lineation, the power of syntax, realms of the stanza, the drama of rhetorical form. We consider each poem as an ecosystem and critique all work in that light. Most of class time is spent discussing your own poems, forces at play within: rhythm, diction, image, figure, tone. We begin each day’s workshop by reading several touchstone poems whose strategies, when internalized, spur stylistic development and open unforeseen ways of sounding/shaping/re-envisioning what you compose.

Participants are welcome to send poems in advance of the workshop for review: 3-4 typed poems (up to five pages total, with no more than one poem per page) before December 15, 2017.