The Interior Landscape: a poetry intensive with Nathan McClain via Zoom

Psychologist and poet Annie G. Rogers asserts, “Every sentence we speak is continually surrounded by what is not said and may in fact be unsayable… However, to hear the unsayable I had to consider words as revealing both a conscious narrative about experience and an unconscious one,” and while it’s wonderful that mental health and wellness has become a more openly discussed subject in society and art, so much of the experience remains almost unsayable.  There is a need, it would seem, to rationalize both the exterior and interior aspects of our experience—but how is this accomplished within the poem?  How does one allow the reader access to such a complicated experience, the speaker’s interior landscape?  How is it communicated—furthermore, recreated—within the mind of the reader?  In this workshop, participants will study poems on the subject of mental health and illness as well as deepen their understanding of the role image plays in the effectiveness of said poems.  Participants should expect to read poems by Richard Siken, Olena Katyiak Davis, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Shira Erlichman, and Leila Chatti, among others.  Packets will be provided prior to the workshop.

Registration for this workshop is $124. Please register at:
The Interior Landscape: a poetry intensive with Nathan McClain via Zoom | Hudson Valley Writers Center

Please note: Two person of color scholarships and one need-based scholarship are given on a first come, first served basis to writers living within the US. Please notify us right away if your plans change and you cannot attend the class. We will then reopen the slot so another student may register. Thank you in advance for this consideration.  Please refer to our Scholarships page before registering for Person of Color Scholarship or Need Based Scholarship. Thank you.

Nathan McClain is a poet, editor, and educator living in Amherst, Massachusetts. He is the author of Scale (Four Way Books, 2017), and his poems have recently appeared, or are forthcoming, in New York Times Magazine, Poem-a-Day, The Common, West Branch Wired, upstreet, and Foundry, among others.