In this generative workshop, we'll focus on writing strategies to help us better use the experiences of our everyday lives—the ordinary stuff that some might even go so far as to say is boring and uninspiring—to write imaginative poems. Audre Lorde put it best: "Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest external horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives." We'll read and discuss model poems, respond to writing prompts, and leave time to share.
L. Renée is a poet and nonfiction writer who works as Assistant Director of Furious Flower Poetry Center and Assistant Professor of English at James Madison University. Nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and two Pushcart Prizes, her work has been published in Obsidian, Tin House Online, Poetry Northwest and elsewhere. A Cave Canem and Watering Hole Fellow, she won the 2022 Rattle Poetry Prize and Appalachian Review’s Denny C. Plattner Award. lreneepoems.com