Sat + Sun, 9:30am - 2pm, Aug 29 - 30

Whether you're simply looking for a late summer poetry tuneup or want to check out the Poets Studio experience prior to applying by September 10, Poet Studio's summer session is open to all poets. Poets Studio is based on the idea that focusing on goals is the key to lasting growth as a poet. It is designed to give form and focus to your poetry writing. Poets Studio Summer Session is a blast -- you'll get to write new poems, revise old ones, and learn ways of making poetry you can use for years. Open to all poets.

Mondays, 10:30am - 12pm (Pacific Time), Oct 5 - Nov 9 | ZOOM

In this generative workshop we will explore how the image works in different kinds of poems. From deep images, to leaping images, to controlling images. With poets such as Garrett Hongo, Dorianne Laux, Lucille Clifton, Larry Levis and others as our guides we will write our own image driven poems while deepening and strengthening our relationship to poetry and to language itself. Open to all poets.

Thursdays, 6:30 - 8pm (Pacific Time), Oct 8 - Nov 12 | ZOOM

Place shapes us before we have words for it. This workshop looks at how poets have written about landscape, region, and the ground they know, or have lost, with a keen eye for detail, earned veracity, and vitality. Over six weeks we will read poets for whom place is sacred ground: Heaney on the Irish bog, Jeffers on the California coast, Forché on Central America torn by war. We will look how the physical world enters into the poem and what it carries when it does, paying particular attention to what arises in times of conflict. Writers will bring their own landscapes to the table and develop new ways of translating the signals they carry to the page. 

Thursdays, 5:30 - 7pm, Oct 15 - Nov 19

In this generative workshop, we will read and write poems that grapple with the experience of fatherhood. Reading with a particular focus on 21st century poetry, we will explore how the subject has become a rallying call for a wide range of American poets, from Terrance Hayes and Li-Young Lee to Edward Hirsch, Blas Falconer and Kevin Young, and we will look to these poems to actively chart and inspire our own. Blending close reading with in-class writing exercises and workshops, this one-of-a-kind course is aimed at father-poets of all experience levels and ages, from those on the doorstep of fatherhood to those with empty nests and a deep well of memories to draw from.  

Mondays, 10:30am - 12pm (Pacific Time), Nov 16 - Dec 21 | ZOOM

Oregon poet William Stafford once remarked that poetry is "just talk, with a little luck in it.” In this generative workshop we will explore a plainspoken poetry, the poetry that does not yell "Here I am! Look at me!" but instead relies on its own steady and local music, and a little luck. With poets such as Matsuo Basho, Kobayashi Issa, Jane Kenyon, Harryette Mullen, Marie Howe, and William Stafford as our guides we will write our way into new poems and a lot of luck. Open to all poets.

Elevate Your Manuscript with David Biespiel

Are you wanting to send out your poetry manuscript to contests and publishing houses? Feel close, not sure it's ready, want one last look? Or maybe it's you want to know if you're on the right path? Open to reordering, cutting, finding gaps that need to be filled? Start the new year with a fresh take on your poetry manuscript. Get attention to the whole book. Together, one-on-one, we'll consult, reflect, and strategize. These one-on-one manuscript consultations include: two (2) one-hour Zoom or in-person meetings, a close reading and hand-made marks poem by poem on your manuscript, notes and feedback for you to use to guide your next steps.