An all-levels generative virtual workshop with poet Traci Brimhall!
Every writer has their strengths, but we often tend to over-rely on what we already know we do well. In this workshop we will focus more on how to create a balance of tension in poems. We will look at poems that model a balance of tension between clarity and wilderness, narrative and music, emotion and intellect. We will then use exercises to generate new work that tries to balance our inherent strengths by employing vocabulary, syntax, and tonal choices we normally shy away from. We will also workshop some new pieces. If you have a natural gift for image and metaphor, what happens when you incorporate philosophy or meditation? If you tend to write simple, declarative sentences, how would your work change if you wrote a poem in a single, long, winding sentence and focused on the musicality of language rather than clarity? Sign up for a tune up.
About the Instructor: Traci Brimhall is a professor of creative writing and narrative medicine at Kansas State University. She is the author of five collections of poetry, including Love Prodigal (published November 2024 by Copper Canyon). Her poems have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The Nation, The New Republic, Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, and Best American Poetry. She’s received fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, the National Parks Service, the Academy of American Poets, and Purdue Library’s Special Collections to study the lost poem drafts of Amelia Earhart. She’s the current poet laureate for the State of Kansas.
**This workshop will take place on Zoom.**
