Join me in Iowa City at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival for a week-long workshop:

Chasing the Poem: A No-Fear Boot Camp for Poets
Sunday July 17-Friday July 22

Are you suffering from writer’s block and needing a push to jump start your writing? Do you need the structure of a predetermined time and place in order to write? Do you work best in a small community of supportive, focused writers; or do you simply want the opportunity to generate new material, workshop new work and discuss the mysteries of the poetic process itself?

In this workshop, you will generate material for new poems through a series of writing prompts, and the idea is to hold your inner critic in check and keep the ideas flowing; to resist staying too wedded to the initial idea and to follow the tangents and side paths down which, as Robert Frost rightly claimed, the true poem often lies. Writing prompts will use poems by master poets as their starting points, and discussing these poems will enable us to explore various aspects of poetic craft and technique. As “homework,” you will be encouraged to work and revise your poems and bring drafts in for workshopping.

This workshop is designed  for beginning poets who are familiar with basic poetic terms and techniques.