This workshop is planned as a celebration of the work of two living legends of the Beat Generation, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Diane di Prima. Participants will be reading works by both poets and writing their own poems inspired by their works. There will be take-home packets of Beat Poetry and a bibliography for further reading. The session will include opportunities to share poems-in-progress.

Meryl Stratford won the 2013 Yellow Jacket Press Contest for Florida Poets for her chapbook, The Magician’s Daughter. Her poems have appeared  in numerous journals including Amsterdam Quarterly, Rattle, and The Society of Classical Poets, and have been anthologized in MALALA:  Poems for Malala Yousafzai, Glass Bottom Sky, and Slay Your Darlings, among others. She studied with Ferlinghetti and di Prima at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and is an associate editor for South Florida Poetry Journal.