Political Love Poems with Richie Hofmann (via Zoom)

Growing up, I noticed teachers of mine used “political poetry” as a term in opposition to—what?—to “real poetry,” to “lyric poetry,” to poetry that exists outside of time, outside of history, that transcends the moment and pressure of its composition. In this one-day generative workshop, we’ll read and discuss poems that challenge this binary, focusing specifically on love poems. Eavan Boland, Gwendolyn Brooks, Adrienne Rich, and other poets will show us the way. And we’ll continue the conversation in our own new drafts.

Richie Hofmann is the author, most recently, of A Hundred Lovers (Alfred A. Knopf, 2022), and he teaches at the University of Chicago.