Creative Writing: Advanced Poetry (online, 2nd 8-week)[***]

In this eight-week on-line workshop, students will expand their notions of how their creative writing can engage the elemental, poignant, and often disquieting subject of childhood by drafting new poems that take up its perceptions, language, and landscapes. In doing so, the will explore the potency and the vulnerabilities of children, as well as the thrall of childhood nostalgia. Students will rediscover and deploy the cadences of childhood rhymes, riddles, chants, taunts, and games, using those beats and melodies in new and surprising (sometimes creepy!) ways. Throughout, we will trace the (sometimes fraught) relationship of childhood to children and to former children (a.k.a. adults). In order to expand our sense of how we might portray and make use of childhood in poetry, we take inspiration from poets like Cameron Awkward-Rich, Catherine Barnett, Elizabeth Bishop, Paula Bohince, Lucie Brock-Broido, Gwendolyn Brooks, Natalie Diaz, Cornelius Eady, Louise Glück, Sue Goyette, Joy Harjo, Kimiko Hahn, Robert Hayden, Randall Jarrell, Stanley Kunitz, Li-Young Lee, Audre Lorde, John Murillo, Patrick Phillips, Patrick Rosal, Craig Morgan Teicher, and others.

Please note that while this course is mostly asynchronous, students may be asked to participate in a synchronous 30-minute small-group discussion at a mutually convenient time.