Class

Breaking Form as Mode of Repair: A Generative Poetry Workshop

This generative poetry class explores how breaking poetic form can serve as a method of repair—for language, memory, body, and world. We’ll engage poems that resist formal expectations to uncover possibilities for care, survival, and radical self-expression. Whether we’re fragmenting the lyric, disrupting the line, or repurposing traditional forms like sonnets and odes, we’ll consider what our poems need to do, rather than what they should look like.

Readings will include work by writers like M. NourbeSe Philip, Douglas Kearney, Myung Mi Kim, CAConrad, and others who write against formal closure. Each week, we’ll write together through guided prompts, discuss model texts, and share new work with a focus on discovery rather than critique. Emphasis will be placed on voice, risk, and building a sense of creative agency.

Open to poets at any stage, this class centers the idea that brokenness is not failure but a space for beauty, reassembly, and new structures. Writers looking to experiment or renew their practice will find a supportive, imaginative space here.

All classes listed on the Loft website take place in Central Time.

Instructions for Accessing This Online Class

In order to access live class meetings, you must have the Zoom application downloaded to your computer. You will also need a WiFi/Internet connection throughout the duration of your scheduled meeting and a computer with audio and video capability. The information to join your Zoom classroom will be provided in your confirmation email upon registration. Please check spam folders if you do not see this email upon registration. For more information on how to use Zoom, please see our training manual here.