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Monday Night Poetry Workshop with John James (via Zoom)


Creativity and Constraint: A Poetry Workshop

This six-week workshop centers on three seemingly simple poetic forms — the ghazal, acrostics, and syllabic verse — to explore how poets manage the pressures of poetic constraint and utilize formal conflicts to pose questions and present ideas. By writing and workshopping their own poems, participants will explore how poets feel through these constraints and learn to implement them within their own writing. Readings will include pieces by Forrest Gander, Agha Shahid Ali, Adrienne Rich, Marianne Moore, Solmaz Sharif, William Blake, and others.

*Participants may try on these forms or compose poems otherwise inspired by class readings. No experience with poetic form necessary to enroll!

NB: This two-hour weekly class will be taught on Zoom and capped at 10. The class will begin on Monday January 23rd and end on Monday March 6th. (No class on Monday February 20 for Presidents’ Day.) Link will be sent to email you use to register at the time of registration and again the day before the class. Please make sure to read our course policies page regarding workshop conduct and logistics before registering for any class at HVWC. Scholarship information will be available for this class on Nov 15th and applications are due on Dec 15, 2022.

John James is the author of The Milk Hours (Milkweed, 2019), selected by Henri Cole for the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, as well as two chapbooks, most recently Winter, Glossolalia, released in 2022 from London’s Black Spring Press Group. His poems appear in Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Poetry Northwest, Best American Poetry, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series. He holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia and is completing a PhD in English at the University of California, Berkeley.

Event Location and Ticket Information

Date: Saturday, February 4, 2023
Times: 6:30 pm - 9:00 pm

Ticket pricing: