"I dig poetry but how do you write that form stuff" (For Stonecoast MFA students only)

Last time you wrote a haiku was in 3rd grade and 5-7-5 was the last time you talked about poetic form ... or you read a few sonnets in high school and your teacher tried to explain how Shakespeare was doing some things, but your mind had other things going on ... or you love to nerd out about on iambic pentameter, rime royale, and a villanelle and the poets writing in those forms aren't all dead, male, and white but who they be? This is the generative workshop for you. You'll be choosing a book on poetics to read by contemporary authors and editors (list provided); a form that you want to try before workshop; a book that uses that form extensively by contemporary writers; and we will learn together how writers (like you) stick to and break the rules. You will write one poem before workshop in the form you choose. In workshop, we will also generate new work in forms like: haibun, sonnet, ziuhitsu, pantoum, haiku/low coup/sonku, golden shovel and quotilla, bop, abecedarian, and more (ex. ever done written a poem that's also a mad lib? You will try it in this workshop!) We will also take the fear out and put the joy into terms like meter, scansion, stanzas. If you ever looked at a poem and thought, "I'm not going to or I don't get it", followed by, "I can't write it", we are going to flip all that on its head. Choose this workshop and you will be adding another identity to your writer name tag: poet. The goals: - develop confidence reading poetry - learn some of the poets who are writing in form right now - get the poetic terms down so when a literary game show calls, you are ready - write the poems you might feel blocked to write (form has a way of opening up portals!) - have some fun (think trivia, dominoes, watercolor, and more)!