Writing Workshops
The goal of our writing workshops is to help individuals grow either creatively or professionally. We do this through traditional creative writing workshops and through professional writing workshops that are focused on topics like publishing, grant writing, and business plan development. Our primary audiences are Veterans and victims of and witnesses to war and geopolitical violence—individuals whose experiences may not have afforded them the opportunity to yet learn these skills. However, we also offer plenty of classes to general audiences, though the class topics gravitate toward our themes.
Upcoming Workshops
The Quartet: Exploring the Multi-Part Poem
What: Designed for poets with some previous writing experience, this workshop explores the quartet (the multi-part poem) made famous by T.S. Eliot. While Eliot’s opus is our starting point in terms of themes (e.g., time, the universe, and the divine), we will explore examples from contemporary poets—like Natalie Diaz, Patricia Smith, and John Murillo—who draw from their lives to create visceral and culturally relevant interconnected poems that tell a powerful story.
This workshop is for those who have work (or the beginnings of it) that addresses the consequences of war or geopolitcal violence. The four-class workshop series will be of particular interest though, to poets who have lived under occupation or segregation / apartheid, or veterans of war, displacement, migration, etc., as the quartet lends itself to highlighting a series of experiences or a time period.
Poets will learn how to use select forms, and experiment with time and perspectives to tell a cohesive story.
Who: Benin Lemus (she/her) is an LA-based poet and educator. Her debut poetry collection, Dreaming in Mourning, is published by World Stage Press. She is a 2022 Inaugural Workshop Fellow with Obsidian magazine’s O|Sessions: Black Listening–A Performance Master Class and the 2022 Honorable Mention in the Furious Flower Poetry Center’s annual poetry competition. Her work is published online and in print and forthcoming in Callaloo. Benin served as the 2024 Finalist Judge for AWP’s (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) Intro to Journals competition for poetry and is an instructor at UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.
When & Where: Online: Saturdays, May 3rd, 10th, 17th, and 31st from 12:30p – 2p ET
Class Limit: 12
Cost: $125
Designations of Empire and Our Use of Poetic Language
What: Poetry is profound because it is emotive and deeply personal. But how do we express the personal and the affective in the face of linguistic habituation, unified literariness, and linguistic conformity? This writing workshop will focus on dismantling and discouraging automatic associations, mental slips, and every usage of already-made language. The incorporated writing exercises will encourage us to experiment with and borrow from subversive language approaches that free language from its riveted and imperial past. We will examine the designation of “poetic language,” how much of our agency and legitimacy is sacrificed in pursuing this poetic language, and what language we can invent to share personal truths and revelations.
By the end of this class, participants will be exposed to constructive and edifying approaches to language use and meaning-making.
Reference books:
Mad Woman by Shara McCallum
Togetherness by Wo Chan
Ban en Banlieue by Bhanu Kapil
Who: Chiagoziem Jideofor is Queer and Igbo. Her poems have appeared or are scheduled to appear in POETRY, Michigan Quarterly Review, Quarterly West, South Carolina Review, berlin lit, The Lincoln Review, Passages North, Commonwealth’s ADDA, the minnesota review, Sho Poetry Journal, Obsidian, and so on.
When & Where: Online: Thursdays, May 22 – June 12 from 7p – 9p ET
Class Limit: 12
Cost: $100