Grackle Art by Marina Novakova
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Okay, so when we write a single poem we exercise a wide array of techniques and sensibilities, but what happens when the poems stop “standing on their own” and gather like beads on a string? What are the narrative possibilities of a story told across several poems? What shifting emotional scapes can we traverse in a lyric sequence? What happens to language itself when systems of imagery, form, and sound are shared by several poems? What about when the thing you thought would be perfect for a sequence ends up not being a good poem?
We will explore these possibilities and more over this 8-week class through generative writing exercises, reading each others work, and reading the works of poets such as Laura Kasischke, Anne Carson, Shane McCrae, Sasha West, Claudia Rankine, Matt Rasmussen, and others.
Anthony Sutton is the author of Particles of a Stranger Light (Veliz Books, 2023). Sutton’s poetry has appeared in Grist, guesthouse, Gulf Coast, The Journal, Prairie Schooner, Puerto del Sol, Zone 3, the forthcoming anthology In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy (Black Lawrence, 2024), and elsewhere. Sutton earned a BA in creative writing from the University of Houston and an MFA from Purdue University. Sutton is an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor fellow in the University of Houston Literature and Creative Writing PhD program and teaches in the community for Grackle & Grackle. Sutton resides in Houston, Texas, on former Akokisas, Atakapa, Karankawa, and Sana land.