Class

Poetry About a Difficult Past: One Approach

Explore the practical, step-by-step process Elisabeth used to write and revise a poetry memoir about trauma, including:

- Determining the thesis
- Gently, systematically navigating writing and revision
- Using conscious distancing and emotional immersion
- Discovering effective forms and framing through freewriting, magnification, voice shifting, cooperation between your past & present selves, realism vs surrealism, showing vs telling, accuracy vs approximation, and more
- Differentiating poetry material from material written for other reasons
- Considering ideal reader takeaways
- Checking your intentions

This craft seminar will focus on mapping out a creative process, with time for quiet writing and questions. *No* triggering example materials will be used. Students will leave this workshop with helpful practical tools for writing poems or a verse memoir about trauma or a difficult past, including fun, nerdy charts and a reading list (including works by Ocean Vuong, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Juanita Casey, and others).

There are no required readings for this process-oriented class. However, a list of poets' works that focus on writing about a difficult past will be provided at the end of class for further reading.