Workshops
Three Amazing Poets, One Incredible Week of Workshops, Seminars, and Readings!
Dates: 2023 TBD
Levels: All
Workshop Fee: $1195
Class Size: 12 (max)
2022 Poetry Week Info:
THE WRITERS HARBOR® POETRY WEEK FOR 2022 HAS BEEN CANCELLED. 2023 DATES AND FACULTY WILL BE POSTED LATE 2022/EARLY 2023.
Upon registering you will be given the chance to select the Poet with whom you would like to study during the week. Book your seat early to ensure a space in your preferred class!
Each day you will begin your workshop at 9 a.m. with your poetry instructor. Workshop registrations remain limited to no more than 12 participants per instructor, so you’ll have the experience of personal attention from the faculty and your fellow poets.
Later on in the afternoon and evenings there will be craft seminar and readings. This gives you the opportunity to learn from all three poets over the course of the week. (Check here for the full schedule)
Evening readings will also take place. These will be open to all participants as well as the larger community – invite your friends and family to these offerings.
Student readings will be held on Friday afternoon to give everyone a chance to share their work with faculty, fellow poets, friends, and family.
Join us for an exciting week to study with one of these accomplished poets!
View Full Poetry Week Schedule
Header Image: Abbe Lyle/Scott Strimple
3 Amazing Poets:
Richard Blanco's Workshop
Whether candid snapshots, cell phone images, or formal portraits, photographs are replete with conscious and unconscious stories to mine. In the interdisciplinary spirit of Maine Media Workshops and College, we will use personal photographs as prompts to write poems that explore our emotional responses to those rich stories. Have on hand 2 or 3 family photos (sharing is optional) that have resonated with you emotionally and have somehow always captivated or intrigued you. Don’t over-think your choice of photos—be instinctual. Then, we will take new photographs of our own to explore how our poetic eye—like the eye of a camera—focuses and frames our experiences; we’ll then “redevelop” these photos into poems. All poems will be shared in dynamic and interactive workshop sessions as we continue to investigate the relationships between imagery, imagination, and story. In addition, through interactive lectures, exercises, and readings of various illustrative poems, we will dive deeper into some of the core techniques of poetry, namely: sensory details, modulations of the poetic line, figurative language, and linguistic musicality.
Rajiv Mohabir's Workshop
Rajiv Mohabir made the list of finalists for the 2022 National Book Critics Circle! In this workshop we will experiment with using extra-literary sources to drive us into the hearts of new poems waiting for us in our subconscious minds. By using taxidermy manuals, books on natural history, knot-tying handbooks, we will use excerpt and influence from unexpected texts in bizarre and reckless ways to jumpstart our associative thinking. Each workshop will draw out of you something new, something unexpected, and we will encounter new ways to reach into ourselves with each writing exercise and close reading of mentor poems. We will spend time drafting new poems, reading poems closely, group workshop, and considering elements of craft in our writing (image, sound, structure, your own philosophy of the line, etc.). Students are asked to bring with them to workshop a book with language usage they are unfamiliar with (if you are not a horticulturalist, then bring with you a text about growing high altitude tomatoes)—the stranger the better!
Carrie Fountain's Workshop
Sometimes we begin a poem with a sharp idea, thought, or feeling, only to find ourselves lost in language too murky to navigate. Because the poem hasn’t traveled as far as it can toward the surprising and specific image, it gets stranded in the land of abstraction. In this workshop, we’ll investigate the art and craft of image-making, and we’ll learn how predisposing ourselves to image can help bring clarity and depth to our writing (not to mention our lives). In moving toward imagery and sensory detail, we cut through the cloudiness of abstraction so our poems can find their way. This workshop is suited for writers of all experience levels and will consist of discussion, exercises, and assignments designed to inspire specificity and hone your authentic voice. In giving feedback, we’ll take each poem on its own terms, offering each other specific, useful insights. Our conversations will be generous and specific, and will center on where the writing can gain ground by way of specific and surprising imagery.
