In this session, we'll talk about the challenges of the sestina form and how we might overcome them by thinking like architects/builders. When the sestina becomes a multi-roomed space, when we break the long and intimidating form into manageable parts, we enable ourselves to focus on each smaller part of the whole with a heightened attention to narrative, movement, and surprise. This is meant to be a generative workshop, in which students will leave the course with the beginnings of a sestina written.
Taylor Byas, Ph.D. (she/her) is a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is a Features Editor for The Rumpus, a Poetry Acquisitions Editor for Variant Literature, an Editorial Board Member for Beloit Poetry Journal, and an Editorial Advisor for Jackleg Press. She is the author of two chapbooks, her debut full-length, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, from Soft Skull Press, which won the 2023 Maya Angelou Book Award and the 2023 Chicago Review of Books Award in Poetry, and Resting Bitch Face, forthcoming in Fall of 2025. She is also a coeditor of The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol X: Alabama from Texas Review Press, and of Poemhood: Our Black Revival, a YA anthology on Black folklore from HarperCollins.
