Truth: A Poet’s Raw Materials with Kathy Fagan (via Zoom)

Dickinson famously wrote: “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.” And Audre Lorde: “Only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.” Our workshop today is based on the premise that poets, in telling their truth, weave narrative and lyric, the personal and political, autobiography and history in their poems and hybrid works. Examples provided include poems or portions of poems by Layli Long Soldier, Terese Svoboda, Tarfia Faizullah, Jean Valentine, Robert Hayden, Omotara James, and Linda Gregg, among others. We will workshop one poem by each of you through the double lenses of “truth” and craft. Based on your workshop poems and poems by those mentioned above, students might go on to practice braiding techniques and other poetic strategies in their own truth-telling work.

NB: This class will be taught on Zoom (Saturday, July 13, 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. 

Kathy Fagan’s sixth poetry collection, winner of the William Carlos Williams Poetry Prize, is Bad Hobby (Milkweed Editions, 2022). Sycamore (Milkweed, 2017) was a finalist for the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Award. A 2023 Guggenheim Fellow, she teaches poetry at The Ohio State University, where she co-founded the MFA Program and co-edits The Journal/OSU Press Wheeler Poetry Prize Series.