Workshops
Community, Mentorship, and Exploration of Poetry with Richard Blanco
There are no available registration dates at this time.
1st In-person Workshop Date: June 9 – 15, 2019
2nd In-person Workshop Date: Jul 28- Aug 3, 2019
Email [email protected] to determine availability.
This six-month course begins with a week-long workshop with Richard June 9 -15 as part of Poetry Week on the Maine Media campus. It continues with an online community for sharing work and ideas, and twice monthly reviews of your work by Richard and other poets in your Intensive. Return to campus Sunday evening July 28 through Friday August 2, workshopping the poems for each participant’s chapbook and using Letterpress to print a keepsake of poems in the Maine Media Book Arts Studio. Over the next several months you will benefit from another round of twice monthly reviews of your work by Richard, with continued engagement with the community of writers online. You’ll finish up in November with a body of work you might want to submit for publication.
If you’re craving a more intense and longer-term course to deepen your understanding of poetry and generate new work, this writing intensive is for you. Perhaps you aren’t seeking an MFA degree—or you already have one, but miss the setting and structure of working with other serious poets and a gifted mentor to inspire and motivate your writing. If so, then this is the perfect opportunity to develop and explore your poetry by engaging in an extended study and conversation within a community of fellow writers mentored by Richard Blanco. In addition, we’ll discuss strategies and techniques for putting together a chapbook as we produce new poems and workshop them, taking a macroscopic view how individual poems fit into each poet’s overarching concerns, themes, and obsessions. Every participant’s goal is to end up with a mini-chapbook of 10-15 poems (or more) by the end of the intensive.
This six-month course begins with a week-long workshop residency June 9 -15 on the Maine Media campus. It continues with an online community for sharing work and ideas, and monthly reviews of your work by Richard. Return to campus Sunday evening July 28 through Friday August 2, workshopping the poems for each participant’s chapbook and using Letterpress to print a keepsake of poems in the Maine Media Book Arts Studio. Over the next three months you will benefit from another round of monthly reviews of your work by Richard, with continued engagement with the community of writers online. You’ll finish up in early November with a body of work you might want to submit for publication.
Registration note: Once you have submitted your registration, please submit a letter explaining your background in writing and your intent, along with up to three poems (no more than six pages) to [email protected]. Your admittance to the Intensive cannot be confirmed until this material has been received and reviewed.
Sign up early, the course will be limited to no more than fourteen students.
This 6-month intensive is not eligible for any promotional offers that may occur.
Image Credit: Amanda Piela, Header Image: Neil Spinner
A selected video from a workshop lecture by Richard Blanco
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Instructor: Richard Blanco
Selected by President Obama as the fifth inaugural poet in U.S. history, Richard Blanco is the first Latino, immigrant, and gay person to serve in such a role. Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami, the negotiation of cultural identity characterizes his four collections of poetry: How To Love a Country, City of a Hundred Fires, which received the Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press; Directions to The Beach of the Dead, recipient of the Beyond Margins Award from the PEN American Center; and Looking for The Gulf Motel, recipient of the Paterson Poetry Prize and the Thom Gunn Award. He has also authored the memoirs For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey and The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood, winner of a Lambda Literary Award. His inaugural poem “One Today” was published as a children’s book, in collaboration with renowned illustrator Dav Pilkey. Boundaries, a collaboration with photographer Jacob Hessler, challenges the physical and psychological dividing lines that shadow the United States. And his latest book of poems, How to Love a Country, both interrogates the American narrative, past and present, and celebrates the still unkept promise of its ideals. Blanco has written occasional poems for the re-opening of the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, Freedom to Marry, the Tech Awards of Silicon Valley, and the Boston Strong benefit concert following the Boston Marathon bombings. He is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and has received numerous honorary doctorates. He has taught at Georgetown University, American University, and Wesleyan University. He serves as the first Education Ambassador for The Academy of American Poets.
