This advanced poetry class invites you to cultivate a body of work that is in conversation with other contemporary poets and represents your most sophisticated aims. Together we read poets publishing right now such as Hanif Abduraqid, Hala Alyan, Laura Henriksen, Ruben Quesada, Dianne Seuss and the poets you are eager to add to the list. We consider how the poets we’re reading do what they do and follow the documentary, critical, essayistic, political, or formal impulses they prompt us to consider in our own poems. The majority of our time is focused on your writing and you can expect to generate a substantial chapbook-length final project of new poetry to carry into capstone work or an invigorated writing practice. June Jordan’s collaborative Poetry for the People pedagogical model is a touchstone for our class structure and critique conversations are tailored to each poet’s goals. Join a cohort of your contemporaries in building a supportive artistic community as well as your capacity as a poet to meet the moment.

This advanced poetry writing workshop will focus on the asking of questions (and uncertainty, ambiguity, mystery) as a wellspring of poetic energy. Every week we will create new and curious work, cultivate the sustainable generative practices to keep that new work innovative and formally exciting (for both yourself and your audience), and exchange meaningful craft-driven feedback in a community. This course will help you to substantially grow your overall body of work in preparation for the Senior Seminar experience in your graduation semester. Together we’ll figure out what revision can do for our existing projects, how to engage and employ the techniques of other poets that we admire, and how to write the most impactful poem possible at this moment in our lives, one that asks questions worth living inside. Students should be prepared to challenge their own aesthetics and experiences in poetry through the readings, assignments, prompts, and workshop process. Must be enrolled in one of the following Classifications: Junior, Fifth Year, or Senior. Pre-req of LLSW 3520 Intermediate Poetry minimum grade of C.