To “Sin Boldly”: Strategies of Revision with Sharon Kennedy-Nolle

Join poet Sharon Kennedy-Nolle for a one-day craft class on revision. Now it’s back on your desk, but it needs more work. What to do? Beginning with the premise that all writing is rewriting, we will “sin boldly,” as Martin Luther put it, as we explore various strategies of revision.  These include: stress-testing a poem’s figurative language and the structural integrity of its metaphors, deploying antidotes to sentimentality and melodrama, and transforming a poem burdened to declare itself as “Poetry” into something individualized, fresh, and vital. Through close reading, exercises in editing, and workshopping your poems, we will be working toward a Poundian dynamic to “make it new.”