Grackle image by Charles Wallis, available for purchase.
“I’ve often lost myself,
in order to find the burn that keeps everything awake”
― Federico García Lorca
This course is an invitation to explore—even, perhaps, to get a bit lost—in the imaginative act of poetry writing. The poem is a place to play, as much as it is a place to grieve, as much as it is a place to love. The work of poetry is invaluable because it brings us back to the sensations of the world, and also reminds us of our existence within it. In this course, we’ll have the opportunity to develop our voices, follow our creative impulses, and get lost in our imaginations. All experience levels are welcome! Each session will focus on discussion of participant’s own work and generative writing activities. We’ll draw inspiration from reading a variety of published work by poets from different backgrounds and aesthetic sensibilities. Importantly, each week we’ll work towards cultivating a sense of trust and vulnerability as we commit ourselves to what is on the page, in our heads, in our bodies—finding what keeps us awake in the world and writing to it, for it, and from it.
Bevin O’Connor is a poet and educator from Southern California and received her MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is the winner of the Prairie Lights Donald Justice Poetry Contest, and her poem “Harvest Syntax” won the 2023 Michelle Boisseau Poetry Prize. Bevin has taught writing at the University of Iowa, the University of Southern California, and the University of Houston. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in Southern Indiana Review, Third Coast, Bear Review, Annulet, Palette Poetry, Afternoon Visitor, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Poetry at the University of Houston, where she is an Inprint Nina and Michael Zilkha Fellowship recipient and winner of the Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry. Bevin serves as a poetry editor for Gulf Coast magazine.