CONTEMPORARY POETRY: READING + PRACTICE

“Whatever touches us touches our writing.” —Octavia Butler

SOLD OUT

Sundays, October 8–November 19, 11:00am–1:30pm ET

This 7-week online course welcomes students who are interested in reading, writing, and engaging deeply with poetry, a dynamic medium for communication and worldmaking. Our conversations will develop in response to the distinct voices and perspectives each writer brings to the room. Assigned materials will include poems by Arda Collins, Jericho Brown, Yannis Ritsos, and Philip Levine, among others, as well as relevant videos and audio recordings, visual art, and writing prompts. Students will leave with many new drafts, a wealth of inspiring readings and reference materials, and an expanded sense of the possibilities available to them on the page. Artists of all backgrounds and disciplines are encouraged to participate. The class is capped at 12 participants. Sessions will meet synchronously via Zoom.

Sliding scale entry fee: $300–$450

TO APPLY: Email me at emilyrhunt@gmail.com and attach 3 poems or include links to 3 of your poems published online. If your art practice is in another medium, email me links to your work. If you’ve been in class with me before, no need to send work samples. I will reply with further details regarding payment procedure and preparation for the first class.

ACTIVE LISTENING

Class times TBA 2023

“If you lose track of your voice as a writer, go back, eavesdrop, write down everything you hear, and that’s it. That’s you listening to the world,” advises playwright Annie Baker. In this 7-week online course, we will tune in to the rich, wild, alarming and beautiful bits of speech we hear every day—on trains, in coffee shops, offices, classrooms, hallways, libraries and parks—and transform this raw material into poems. We’ll treat eavesdropping and dialogue transcription as a form of generative writing, paying attention to what our inevitably selective, subjective listening tells us about what we’re looking for in the voices around us, what we’re asking language to do for us, and what we have to say as poets. If, as John Berger asserts, “to look is an act of choice,” then to listen is a willful action, too—one that will aid us in uncovering and refining our distinct poetic voices. As we experiment with various tactics for weaving overheard, received, and felt speech into our drafts, we’ll take cues from poets such as June Jordan, Cecilia Vicuña, s*an d. henry-smith, and Eileen Myles. Classes will meet synchronously on Zoom.

Sliding scale entry fee: $300–$450

TO APPLY: Email me at emilyrhunt@gmail.com and attach 3 poems or include links to 3 of your poems published online. If your art practice is in another medium, email me links to your work. If you’ve been in class with me before, no need to send work samples. Indicate whether you would like to sign up for Section A or B. I will reply with further details regarding payment procedure and preparation for the first class.

REVISION AS ALCHEMY: A POETRY LAB

“A poem rarely comes whole and completely dressed. … You get an impression of something—you feel something, you anticipate something, and you begin, feebly, to put these impressions and feelings and anticipation or rememberings into those things which seem so common and handleable—words. And you flail and you falter and you shift and you shake, and finally, you come forth with the first draft. Then, if you’re myself and if you’re like many of the other poets I know, you revise, and you revise. And often the finished product is nothing like your first draft. Sometimes it is.”

—Gwendolyn Brooks

Revision tends to be as important—and as lively, difficult, and surprising—as writing a poem’s first draft. Elizabeth Bishop wrote her famous poem “One Art” in two weeks, but it took her seventeen drafts to arrive at the final version. Poet Eduardo C. Corral writes, “Revision is my favorite part of writing. Revision helps me envision other possibilities for the language on the page.” This revision lab welcomes students who are interested in embracing these possibilities to edit a set of previously written drafts. We will discuss various poets’ revision tactics and philosophies, come up with original approaches to editing, complete generative exercises, and engage in process-oriented group discussions. Each participant will receive direct feedback, suggestions for potential revisions, and reading recommendations from Emily. Over the course of our time together, participants will elevate, invigorate, and refine their drafts, aiming to usher them into living poems.

ONE-DAY WINTER WRITING WORKSHOP

This 2-hour online generative writing workshop welcomes students who are interested in experimenting with and reflecting on poetry, a dynamic medium for communication and worldmaking. Participants will draft new writing based on both collaborative and solo in-class exercises. They will then work in breakout rooms to expand and discuss these drafts. This gathering on Zoom is an opportunity to spark dialogues with writers, artists, and thinkers of all backgrounds and disciplines. Class members will leave with many seeds for new poems, a folder of inspiring and relevant readings and reference materials for the new year, and an expanded sense of the possibilities available to them on the page.

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CONTEMPORARY POETRY: READING + PRACTICE

“I have been visited for a few days by lines and lines of ghost-like creatures.”

—Etel Adnan, Shifting the Silence

Summer & Fall 2021

This 7-week online course welcomes students who are interested in reading, writing, and engaging deeply with poetry, a dynamic medium for communication and worldmaking. Our conversations will develop in response to the distinct voices and perspectives each writer brings to the room. Assigned materials will include poems by Choi Seungja, Wanda Coleman, George Oppen, Yannis Ritsos, and Mary Ruefle, among others, as well as relevant videos and audio recordings, visual art, and writing prompts. Students will leave with many new drafts, a wealth of inspiring readings and reference materials, and an expanded sense of the possibilities available to them on the page. Class sessions will meet synchronously via Zoom.

LIVING IN LONG POEMS

Ugly Duckling Presse, 2020 & 2021

Great long poems create space for contradiction, drifting, deepening, dailiness, loss, epiphany, and revival. This seminar will focus on reading and responding to poems that stretch out over the length of chapbooks and full-length collections. In our time together, we’ll consider and engage with the voices, textures, resonances, and formal approaches of Saretta Morgan’s Feeling Upon Arrival, Simone Kearney’s My Ida, Alexis Almeida’s I Have Never Been Able to Sing, and Eleni Vakalo’s “Plant Upbringing” (in Before Lyricism). We'll also read and discuss Aditi Machado's essay, The End. Taking cues from these writers and inspiration from assigned generative writing exercises, participants will draft a long poem of their own over the course of 5 weeks, sharing selections of it with the group as it develops. Class sessions will meet synchronously via Zoom. Artists of all backgrounds are encouraged to participate. PDFs of each text will be sent to participants in advance of the seminar.

CHOOSING POETRY

Fall 2020

Communication comes, to make this place fertile, to make it possible to meet the world with all the resources we have, the fund of faith, the generous instruments of imagination and knowledge. Poetry may be seen as one sum of such equipment, as an image of the kind of fullness that can best meet the evening, the hostile imagination—which restricts, denies, and proclaims death—and the inner clouds which mask our fears. Now we turn to memory, we search all the days we had forgotten for a tradition that can support our arms in such a moment. If we are free people, we are also in a sense free to choose our past, at every moment to choose the tradition we will bring to the future. We invoke a rigorous positive, that will enable us to imagine our choices, and to make them.

—Muriel Rukeyser, The Life of Poetry, 1949

This 5-session workshop welcomes students who are interested in turning to poetry, a dynamic medium for communication and worldmaking—“a rigorous positive.” It will consist of reading and writing assignments, group discussions, and in-class critiques. It will be capped at 8 participants to allow for ample time for close readings of each draft. Our conversations will develop in response to the distinct voices and perspectives each writer brings to the room. Readings will include selections from Toni Morrison’s The Source of Self-Regard and poems by Lucille Clifton, Mayuzumi Madoka, Simone White, Patrizia Cavalli, June Jordan, and Fernando Pessoa, among others. Students will leave with a set of new, workshopped poems, extensive feedback, and an expanded sense of their capacity as writers. Class sessions will meet synchronously via Zoom.

10% of proceeds will be donated to an organization, individual, or family we choose together. I’ll gladly consider sliding scale discounts if cost is a barrier; feel free to inquire about this.

To apply: Email me at emilyrhunt [ AT ] gmail.com and attach 4 pages of your poetry or include links to 4 of your poems published online. Artists of all disciplines and students interested in writing poetry for the first time are welcome to apply; if you work in another medium, email me links to your work. Indicate which Section you would like to sign up for. I will reply with further details (regarding procedure for payment, and preparation for the first class).

INFLUENCE IN BOTH DIRECTIONS

Brooklyn Poets, Summers 2019 & 2020

In his book The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture, philosopher Emanuele Coccia writes that “the living being is an environment for the world in the same way in which the remaining things of the world are the environment of the living individual. Influence always goes in both directions.” In this six-week online workshop, each of us will identify a single object of attention (a particular thing, creature or environment—living or dead, animate or inanimate) at the outset, then explore it in writing for the duration of our time together, sharpening and expanding our reception, perception and depiction of it through each new poem we write. Drafts may accumulate as one long poem in parts, or as a series of related poems; our aim will be to transfer the energy of our chosen creature, place or object into the bodies of our poems. Weekly writing prompts will be inspired by poetic series such as Eleni Vakalo’s “Plant Upbringing” and Lydia Davis’s “The Cows,” as well as individual poems by Yusef Komunyakaa, Liu Xia, Lucille Clifton, Lydia Davis, Francisco X. Alarcón, Ana Luísa Amaral, Elizabeth Bishop, Federico García Lorca, Jack Spicer, James Schuyler and Wong May. The longer we look at and into our subjects—the more time and energy we offer them in the space of our poems—the more clearly and vibrantly they’ll shine through the words we choose to embody them. In discovering and rediscovering their richness, we’ll attempt to learn more about ourselves and our voices as poets. Class sessions will meet synchronously via Zoom every Wednesday night, and assignments, poems and critiques will be shared via Wet Ink.

SHORT POEMS

Brooklyn Poets, Spring 2020

The temple bell stops—
but the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers.

—Matsuo Bashō (trans. by Robert Bly)

Great short poems (like Bashō’s above) can, after one read, stick with you for a lifetime. Some are written quickly, and others emerge as the result of weeks or years of work. This generative workshop welcomes students who are interested in tapping into the power of short poems. We’ll discuss the impact and inherent power of single words, phrases, images and gestures; consider the energy of the blank space that surrounds a few carefully crafted, sonically and visually attuned lines; embrace compression; and rescue strong short poems from longer drafts. Students will complete a variety of generative exercises to write poems that range from 1 to 14 lines: haiku, sonnets, lyrics, and free verse. We’ll take cues from poets such as Kobayashi Issa, Fanny Howe, Federico García Lorca, A.R. Ammons, Lucille Clifton and Larry Eigner. We’ll also explore the art of Jenny Holzer and Adrian Piper, who effectively use short phrases and sentences in their work. Participants will leave with 4–6 new, workshopped poems, detailed written critiques of these poems, and a greater capacity to write striking, dynamic short poems.

DIRECT ADDRESS

Poets House, Fall 2019

In this workshop, we’ll embrace the urgency, clarity, volition, and sensuality that can surface when we write to someone or something, rather than about, around, or in light of a subject. Taking inspiration from Bernadette Mayer, Lucille Clifton, Fernando Pessoa, Solmaz Sharif, Dara Wier, and others, we’ll ask, how do our voices change based on whom or what we address? What happens to diction, tone, and form?

ECSTASY IN POETRY

Brooklyn Poets, Fall 2019

“Sappho steps outside herself. Love has caused her to abandon her body. The green grows greener. Some essential quality deepens as the self is removed,” writes Jia Tolentino on Anne Carson’s translation of Sappho’s Fragment 31. How can poetry open doors to rapture and self-transcendence? What is fruitful, dangerous, and complex about ecstasy? In what language does ecstasy touch or even become grace, death, fear or other truths? Might poems be places where we can detect sharp differences between ecstasy and trance, the ecstatic and the euphoric? As we take these inquiries on, we’ll write new poems based on generative exercises, reaching for the ecstatic in our work. We’ll look to writers Joy Harjo, Fernando Pessoa, Peter Gizzi, Donika Kelly, Emily Dickinson, Kim Hyesoon, Dorothea Lasky, Ross Gay, Rainer Maria Rilke and others to show us where ecstasy lives, how it moves us, what it might build or break down.

OPEN LEVEL 1-DAY WORKSHOP

Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop

This 3-hour workshop welcomes students who are interested in experimenting with poetry as a dynamic tool for communication, self-expansion, social impact, and worldmaking. We will spend the first hour generating writing based on in-class exercises; we’ll get inspiration from overheard language, visual art, a diverse selection of poetry, and group discussion. The next two hours will be dedicated to workshopping a poem by each student submitted in advance of the class and distributed before we meet. In our time together, we’ll ask ourselves how our ingrained daily and weekly habits, activities, and tendencies are forms of reading and writing, aiming to leave the room awake to the fertile material we encounter daily, and energized to keep writing. The class is capped at 8 students to allow ample time for workshopping each poem.

OPEN LEVEL POETRY WORKSHOP

Berl’s Poetry Shop, Fall 2017

This workshop will consist of reading and writing assignments, group discussions, and in class critiques. It will be capped at 9 participants to allow for ample time for close readings of each draft. Optional writing prompts will be given each week for those who are interested in experimenting with them. Rather than adhering to an overarching theme, our discussions will develop in response to the distinct poems and perspectives each writer brings to the room. A few questions we will tackle together: How can poetry allow us to become unstuck, or to synthesize and magnify experience? How can our work trace and reflect back to us the evolution of our thoughts and perceptions, our histories, our ways of moving through the world? What makes certain poems propel, inspire, ground, or capture us, stay with us for years or leave us as quickly as they found us? How do our patterns of moving between environments on the page and on the ground—shifting as they can be—influence our experiences of reading and creating? As we embrace the pleasures and challenges of sharing work with friends and strangers, we will consider voice, image, pacing, diction, and form. We will look closely at the work of writers such as June Jordan, Renee Gladman, Chika Sagawa, Etel Adnan, Ari Banias, and Sara Nicholson, to name a few. We will begin with passages from Muriel Rukeyser’s The Life of Poetry, and her words will carry us through our five weeks together: “Communication comes, to make this place fertile, to make it possible to meet the world with all the resources we have, the fund of faith, the generous instruments of imagination and knowledge. Poetry may be seen as one sum of such equipment, as an image of the kind of fullness that can best meet the evening . . .”