Writing What You Don’t Know: A Generative Workshop with Kim Addonizio (via Zoom)

The old advice, “Write what you know,” is useful–but limited. If we know too much about what we want to say, our work may lack that needed sense of discovery and surprise. Poems are often not about what their writers know, but what they don’t; both the process of writing and the end results involve confusion and questioning, doubt and faith. Asking questions, wondering, and imagining are all part of the poetic process. In this workshop, we’ll look at some poems that proceed through questioning and explore not-knowing–Keats’s famous “Negative Capability”– as a way to generate poems that enact our own questions and move our work forward. 

Kim Addonizio’s latest poetry collections are Exit Opera (W.W, Norton, 2024) and Now We’re Getting Somewhere (W.W. Norton, 2021). She is the author of seven other poetry collections, two novels, two story collections, and two books on writing poetry, The Poet’s Companion (with Dorianne Laux, W.W. Norton, 1997) and Ordinary Genius (W.W. Norton, 2009), as well as a memoir, Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life (Penguin Books, 2016). Her awards include fellowships from the NEA and Guggenheim Foundation and her collection Tell Me was a finalist for the National Book Award. She lives in Oakland, CA and teaches poetry workshops on Zoom. https://www.kimaddonizio.com.

Photo Credit: Elizabeth Sanderson