The Image is the Bridge with Jared Harél (via Zoom)

“The image is the bridge. The image is what activates the body of the reader, and connects the writer to the person reading. It allows readers to join in and feel it.”— Gabrielle Bates. To write is to reach out to the world around us. It is to extend an outstretched hand in the hopes that someone – a reader – will grasp it. Captivating imagery can ignite the imagination, link language to experience, and offer us new and more precise ways to describe what it means to be alive. In this fun and generative workshop, we will read and discuss model poems that utilize description in bold and inventive ways, then set off writing our own. Employing metaphor, simile, figurative language and the five-senses, we will seize upon the images that animate our days, bear our weight, and ultimately help us connect to one another.

NB: This class will be taught on Zoom (Sunday, August 18, 12:30-2:30 PM ET) and will be capped at 15 students. Registrants will receive the Zoom link to the email address they use to register. It will arrive immediately after registration so please check your spam folder if you do not receive it. It will also be sent the day before class as a reminder. Please review the course policies page before registering for any classes. Please email misty@writerscenter.org with any questions.

All HVWC scholarship applications will be available on May 1 and will be due on May 15 for all summer/fall 2024 classes. 

Jared Harél is the author, most recently, of Let Our Bodies Change the Subject (Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2023) which won the 2022 Prairie Schooner Raz/Shumaker Book Prize in Poetry and was named a Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. He’s been awarded the ‘Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize’ from American Poetry Review, as well as the ‘William Matthews Poetry Prize’ from Asheville Poetry Review. Harél’s poems have recently appeared in such journals as 32 Poems, Beloit Poetry Journal, Electric Literature, Lit Hub, Ploughshares, Poem-a-Day, Southern Review and The Sun. He teaches writing, plays drums, and lives in Westchester, NY with his wife and two kids. For more information, visit: jaredharel.com