6-Week Poetry Workshop: Catching an Editor's Eye
Date & Time
Thursdays, 7-9 p.m.
May 24 - Jun. 28
Class Size
10 Students
Thursdays, 7-9 p.m.
May 24 - Jun. 28
10 Students
This course is for anyone who wants to improve their creativity, generate fresh work, and produce poetry rich in vivid imagery—the kind that stops readers in their tracks and gets editors nodding their heads.
Together, we'll learn to push beyond cliches and illustrate life in new ways on the page. You’ll each workshop 4-5 poems, written outside of class and of your own choosing. We’ll also hold mini-workshops for poems we compose during in-class writing exercises, and discuss potential outlets for publication. For inspiration, we’ll look at a range of poets (Terrance Hayes, Richard Siken, Victoria Chang, and others) to examine how they craft their own visual magic. Whether you’re a seasoned poet or new to the genre, this workshop will inspire you to put pen to paper and sharpen how you make use of sensory details across all kinds of writing.
COURSE TAKEAWAYS:
- Receive specific, action-oriented feedback on your poetry
- Acquire skills you can apply across all genres of writing / communication
- Achieve the kind of visual specificity / richness that editors love
Ben Purkert is the author of the forthcoming novel The Men Can't Be Saved (Overlook, 2023). His poetry collection For the Love of Endings (Four Way Books, 2018) was named one of Adroit's Best Poetry Books of the Year. His writing appears in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Nation, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. The founding editor of Guernica's Back Draft interview series, he teaches at Rutgers. You can read more of his work at benpurkert.com or on Twitter (@BenPurkert).
"It was lit."
"[A] perceptive debut... The collection pings with delightful precision between the objects that connect people and those that divide."
"This is a poetry that makes a place for the tangential, the trace, the touch, a tomorrow.”
"I want this book to float out into the cosmos to reach future and existing forms of intelligence—to let them know there was at least one beautiful/difficult, dark/brilliant side to us earthlings.”
