Prose poetry is far more than just verse without line breaks. Borrowing from a variety of forms and genres, including questionnaires, conversations, dream narratives, and art installations like those of Joseph Cornell, these little blocks, patches, scraps, chunks, fragments—whatever you want to call them—are tiny boxes that can contain big things.
Through brief in-class readings by such foundational authors as Aloysius Bertrand and Charles Baudelaire up to present-day practitioners, students will see how the prose poem represents an exciting intersection among nonfiction, fiction, drama and poetry. After discussing how these blocks are structured—and talking about where to read and submit these popular genre-bending forms—we'll do in-class exercises, and walk out with rough drafts of a few prose poems we can continue to hone, as well as with a new sense of how to bring innovation to writing of all lengths and genres.
Kathleen will judge a themed contest: Best Prose Poem with a Surreal Element. 2 page limit; 12 Entries: must be received no later than March 25.
Please see the Manuscript and Contest Page for details.
KATHLEEN ROONEY is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press and a founding member of Poems While You Wait. She is the author of the novels Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey, and From Dust to Stardust. Her poetry collection Where Are the Snows, winner of the XJ Kennedy Prize, was released in Fall of 2022 by Texas Review Press. Her picture book Leaf Town Forever, co-written with her sister Beth Rooney was released in Fall 2025 and her latest novel, Man Overboard! will be published in Summer 2026. She lives in Chicago with her spouse, the writer Martin Seay, and teaches at DePaul.
