The Joy of Editing with Daniel Lawless and Frances Richey (via Zoom)

This workshop focuses on the art of editing, and offers techniques that help writers re-enter that old friend, the poem that’s almost finished, with renewed creative energy. The one you’ve read and reread, and tweaked and put in the drawer. Each poet can bring in any poem they wish, even a new one. Bring in a piece (up to one full page) that’s almost there, but perhaps has been rejected by one journal or more that you respect. The intention is to bring fresh eyes to the work, and to help discover the poem’s true and lasting form in terms of language, line breaks, imagery, music and shape on the page. Each submission will receive close personal attention by the instructors. This iteration of the class is expanded to include a discussion of published poems and what makes them “work.”

NB: This class will be taught on Zoom (Sunday, November 17, 12:30-4:30 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.

Daniel Lawless is the author most recently of The Gun My Sister Killed Herself With; his next book, [I tell you this now] will be released in March 2024. Recent poems in FIELD, Barrow Street, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, Poetry International, Los Angeles Review, upsteet, SOLSTICE, Manhattan Review, Massachusetts Review, ,JAMA, and Dreaming Awake: New Prose Poetry from the U.S., Australia, and the U.K., among others. A recipient of a continuing Shifting Foundation grant, he is the founder and editor of Plume: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry, Plume Editions, and the annual Plume Poetry anthologies.

Frances Richey is the author of three poetry collections: The Warrior (Viking Penguin 2008), The Burning Point (White Pine Press 2004), and the chapbook, Voices of the Guard, a collaboration with the Oregon National Guard and Clackamas Community College, published by the college in 2010. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, O, The Oprah Magazine, Gulf Coast, Salamander, Blackbird, and The Cortland Review, among others. She was a winner of Nicholas Kristof’s Iraq War Poetry Contest, and her poem appeared in his column, entitled “The Poets of War,” in June, 2007. She was the Barbara and Andrew Senchak Fellow at MacDowell for 2015-2016, a Finalist for the National Poetry Series in 2019, and a Finalist for the 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize. Her poems have been featured on NPR, PBS NewsHour and Verse Daily. She teaches an on-going poetry writing class at Himan Brown Senior Program at the 92NY in NYC where she is Poet-in-Residence.