In this eight-week on-line workshop, students will expand their notions of how poetry can engage the elemental, poigant, and often disquieting subject of childhood by drafting new poems that take up the its perceptions, language, and landscapes. In doing so, they 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 meoldies in new and surprising (sometimes creepy!) ways. Througout, we will trace the sometimes fraught relationship of children to each other 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 inspirations from poets like Cameron Awkward-Rich, Catherine Barnett, Elizabeth Bishop, Paula Bohince, Lucie Brock-Broido, Gwendolyn Brooks, Jennifer Chang, Natalie Diaz, Cornelius Eady, Joy Harjo, Robert Hayden, Randall Jarrell, Stanley Kunitz, Brenda Shaughnessy, Craig Morgan Teicher, and others. 

Please note that while this course is mostly asynchronous, students must particiapte in a synchronous 30-minute small-group discussion at a mutually convenient time.