The Continuing Poet

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 several 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.