We were all children, until we weren’t. But the similarities often end there. This poetry course will explore “childhood” and its various depictions, contradictions, tropes, and images in poetry, as well as our own memories (and mis-memories) of our own past. How have poets attempted to write “childhood” as a real historical period of time that happened, a psychic experience, a state of mind, a verifiable set of events, a retrospective fantasy that is often invented, a set of stories that help us cope and grow, and much else? We will read poetry that depicts all kinds of childhoods, trying out different poetic techniques to draw out the nuance of individual experience. We will also think about different conceptualizations of the children we once were, like our “inner child,” our childlike qualities, and binaries of innocence vs. knowledge. The course will involve memory-writing exercises, writing about both real and fake childhoods, hearing about other people’s childhoods, and playing around with the clichés of childhood narratives in order to produce writing that feels authentic to the infinite pleasures and confusions of a formative time. Weekly reading responses, poetry exercises, discussion, and participation in the weekly seminar activities is required. We’ll read work by Miller Oberman, Franz Kafka, William Blake, Wo Chan, Jenny Zhang, and many more.