What is a Poem? A Poetry Workshop Facilitated by Chloe Firetto-Toomey
Saturday, May 4th, 2019 1:00pm - 3:00pm
Old School Square Crest Theatre Classroom #6  (Upstairs) 51 N. Swinton Avenue in Delray Beach

Participants will navigate a scope of contemporary forms and practices with time dedicated to each: reading, class discussion, and freewriting. Students will be exposed to an eclectic range of work and asked to investigate what the mechanics of poems, the little engines of poems, are made of? The workshop will explore how images are constructed to create the world of the poem, how images build narratives, how words create worlds for the reader to reside within and create sensory experiences of the poem. How might a poem manipulate the reader’s mood, body sensations? Students will practice ways to create tension with focus on concrete details, and how grammar, syntax, line breaks, control the speed and velocity of poems. The third and final section of the workshop will notice how poets use patterns to generate insights, the poem’s heart-meat. This is an intense, crash-course, generative workshop. Facilitator Chloe Firetto-Toomey is an English-American MFA candidate in nonfiction at Florida International University, where she served as a teaching assistant and poetry editor for Gulf Stream Magazine. $10 per person