This workshop is geared towards poets interested in discussing philosophical issues relevant to contemporary poetry and using those discussions to fuel new work or to significantly alter/revise poems that have proved challenging to construct. We will begin by considering seminal essays that grapple with notions of poetic heritage or lineage, and drawing further on essays and poems, we will move to craft discussions with attention to the world outside of the poem, the politics of form, and writing complicity. Prose and poetry written by Emilia Phillips, Marilyn Nelson, Ocean Vuong, and Chris Abani will be read, among others.
Do bring a laptop. Each workshop will begin with a discussion with a generous amount of writing time dedicated to each session. The workshop is geared towards poets in all stages of their writing. At the workshop’s end, participants should have a stronger idea of how they situate themselves within the varied, and sometimes contradictory, terrain that is contemporary American poetry.
Niki Herd has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Texas Review, Obsidian, The Rumpus, Lit Hub, North American Review, and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2, among other journals and anthologies. Her work has been supported by the Cave Canem Foundation and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and her collection, The Language of Shedding Skin, was published as part of the Editor’s Select Series for Main Street Rag. She is currently a third-year Creative Writing doctoral student at the University of Houston.