The Continuing Poet

About this course:

The pursuit of poetry is a sustained, often lonesome, practice. Students who complete early creative writing courses can feel that they miss the pressures of workshop, of having and meeting a deadline, and of participating in conversations about their poems. You may be at an intermediate stage: you have written poems, but not enough of them to consider a book length work. You’re still looking for a space to continue with a serious engagement in the art as you hone your work toward publication. In this creative writing poetry course, continuing poets will read a selection of contemporary books, discussing the merits of both individual poems and entire collections in the interest of developing a unique poetic voice while building their portfolio. Students will complete assigned readings, take part in online discussions, and participate in workshop to develop, write, and revise 5 new poems which they send out for publication by the end of quarter. Students leave the class with a better understanding of their own poetic talents and of their unique relationship to the larger poetic tradition as they continue to write. Each quarter, a new set of contemporary collections will be assigned so that this class may be taken over again as the student continues to write poems toward a manuscript collection.