In this workshop, we will concentrate on play, experimentation, generating work, and exploring the work of published poets and flash (short-form prose) writers. So this workshop may be more accurately called a playshop. I have a formula that I write on the top line of the syllabus for every course I teach: PLAY + PRACTICE = WORK. My formula is based on my own process and experience, as well as established theory and research about how we write. To write in your authentic voice, be a free child playing to learn and explore because writing is a form of thought experimentation in which the unexpected is revealed. I recommend that you practice writing in the same way that an athlete trains, an actor rehearses, a musician or a dancer practices technique, or a painter does quick gestures to warm up. If you call on your inner child to write often, you’ll develop technique and you’ll hardwire your brain to enter the territory where poetry dwells. Even revision, which I will provide opportunities for you to practice, involves this formula. Contrary to the writing truism that revision calls on your inner critic while you “re-vision,” my own practice shows me that in order to “revision ,” the inner critic needs to be kept at bay while I employ my craft with a new kind of freedom, my free child still playing.

In your journey in the art, I want you to know what works and plays in your poetry before you hear from others what doesn’t. That thing others say doesn’t work might be a seed waiting to bloom. You already have enough critical voices in your head holding you back—we all do, right? In this course, your texts are not sick. I encourage you to be bold and write often and with abandon, rather than worry about critiquing yourself and others. My experience shows me that we create a supportive and synergistic community when we write together and we express what I call “enthusiasms” for each other’s work.

I see myself as your guide, not because I want you to travel the paths that I have but because I know the way to some wide-open territory where you’ll discover some trails I’ve never seen. In this open place is your art, the art of your peers, and the work of published poets, whom we’ll read together. I want you to be open to the possibility of being influenced by others, because influence shows you some moves you might want to dance with your own choreography.

I find we have the most productive discussions about your work when we develop a vocabulary together based on our readings of poetry and poetics, and describe how our own poetics and artistic process are transformed by our reading. The premise here is that we write poetry in dialogue with the poets of the past, present, and future. I will not require you to read certain texts, rather I will ask you to choose from a list I’ve compiled around a theme—each week we’ll read poetry together that deals sound, visual art, labor, sanctuary, race, gender, spirituality, and we will also explore the ways that the poetry as a genre is hybridizing, dissolving, opening up, etc. You’ll share your favorite texts. Each of us will bring a lexicon to the table enriched both by what we read in common and on our own.

Just as I won’t require you to read texts so, too, will you choose your writing projects. Writing in this course that I recommend (you choose) includes in-class writing (I write with you), weekly short self-reflections in which you set an intention for the next week, and a final project. The final project is open-genre and may be a short chapbook of poems, a poetry video, music. I will ask you to write a short paragraph about how you envision your project and we will discuss it, if you choose.

Finally, I promise you I will never ask you to write or read anything that I don’t enthusiastically want to write and read myself. I’ll provide you with an abundance of choices that inspire me and ask that choose your own voice and vision.