Creative Writing: Intermediate Poetry

As poet Kaveh Akbar has described, just as a sculptor molds clay, or a singer trains their voice, poets use language as their medium to create art. In this intermediate poetry workshop, we will construct poems considering language as our primary building block. From journaling unusual occurrences of language around us, to examining gardening encyclopedias or music dictionaries, to learning more about the poetics of sound and syntax and form, we will emerge with new possibilities for language that will enable us to write poems that sound and feel and think out loud on the page. Some authors we will turn to for inspiration include Kimberly Grey, Hanif Abdurraqib, Chase Berggun, and Jos Charles, among others.