The Widening Gyre: Writing on Anxiety with Jane Huffman (Via Zoom)

No, writing poetry is not necessarily a therapeutic process. But in anxious times, we can turn to creativity as a means of engaging dynamically with complex feelings and experiences. In this class, we will explore methods of writing about anxiety––integrating the terrible, speculative powers of “what if” and “what now” into our writing practice. The aim is not to diagnose, soothe, solve, or aestheticize our anxieties but to use poetry, and its unique capabilities, to negotiate with ourselves, confront complex personal/political realities, and “explore the wreck […] to see the damage that was done / and the treasures that prevail” (Adrienne Rich). Students will study poems that speak to uncertainty, insomnia, compulsion, breakdown, and clarity, and they will have a chance, using prompts provided by the instructor, to practice writing such poems themselves. Students will engage both with the tools of free verse and with some given forms and should be prepared to experiment with both modes. (The sestina, for example, with its spiraling form, can be well-suited to writing about anxiety.) This class is designed for poets of all experience levels. Please be aware that due to its topic, this course will address difficult, potentially triggering topics, though students will not be expected to share their work unless they choose to.zoom links

Jane Huffman is a doctoral student in English and Literary Arts at the University of Denver. Before that, she earned an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and taught undergraduate writing at the University of Iowa for seven years. Her debut collection of poetry, Public Abstract, won the 2023 Honickman/APR First Book Prize, and her poetry has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, American Poetry Review, Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. She was a 2019 recipient of the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.