Sci-Fi & Speculative Synths: New Worlds, New Poetry At the crossroads of science and fantasy, how can concepts and themes in science fiction reinvent and restructure your poetry? How might you imagine the future right now? From experimenting with new voice and tone to exploring how to use space on the page, this five-week workshop will touch on ideas like floating cities, cyborgs, teleportation, astrobiology and first contact with extraterrestrial life. We’ll draw inspiration from popular science fiction films, visual artists inspired by the cosmos and of course, poetry, from authors like Felicia Zamora, Josh Bennett, Moon Bo Young, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Diane Thiel, and more.

Those Days of Being Wild What solitary night walks and “one-minute friends” could unleash a new poetry of the senses? When the DJ could not save your life that night, what downpour stopped you dead as you could not escape old heartbreak to reach new catharsis—yet knowing you would only to do it all over again? In this generative, seven-week online workshop, we’ll explore the joys and sorrows of reckless decisions and sunrise rebellions that led us wonderfully astray, far from “true” love and common sense. We’ll re-center the narrative of “the love story” in favor of staking our words on the best worst decisions of relationships and near-misses. We’ll read work from poets such as Carl Phillips, Esperanza Hope Snyder, Adrienne Su, Natalie Diaz, Caroline Bird and more.

Poetry of Peculiar Joys In these trying times of so much unrest and anxiety, how do we connect and better yet, keep ourselves open to the very idea of letting others in? How can we reframe our expectations for the future, our hopes and happiness, through a poetry of a new, sometimes painful but necessary candor? In this workshop, we will examine the complexities of joy through the lenses and modes of the fragile familial ties, turbulent love affairs and even the elegy, develing into contemporary poetry by Carolina Ebeid, Helen Mort, Natasha Tretheway, Ross Gay, Traci Brimhall, Keith S. Wilson, Darrel Alejandro Holnes and more.

Humor & Poetry How can we use mischief and humor to shape the voice, form and trajectory of a poem? In this workshop, we’ll explore how you can tap into your own sense of humor to shed light on the larger life questions that are difficult to explore and answer, or issues you might fear most. We’ll read poets like Tom Sleigh, Naomi Shihab Nye, Emilia Phillips, Marilyn Chin, June Jordan and more. Students will respond with poems of their own to weekly prompts, utilizing satire, absurdism, surrealism and wordplay to create comedic effects. The workshop will also cover aspects of performance and how to impart humor off the page. We’ll dedicate a week to the idea of “poetry improv,” which will include a range of exercises and writing prompts to free your spontaneous, comedic lyrical self.

Writing the Sex Poem Enough with the love poem-- what of sex itself? In the workshop, we will explore different facets and themes of writing the sex poem, in all its near releases and necessary exorcism of those who thrill us but often most leave (eventually) so that one might re-center narrative, inspiration and all of brief and prolonged intimacies, reshaping all that is and is not ceremony. We’ll read work by Safiya Sinclair, Paul Tran, Roy G. Guzmán, Christian Gullette, Natalie Diaz, Carl Phillips, Chen Chen and more.