Turn your pile of poems into a publishable book or chapbook.
Whether you have just started your manuscript, or have made significant progress, this course will help you get over the finish line. We’ll learn how to structure the book in a way that adds layers of meaning to the poems within, generate new work to fill in the structure, and hone poems until they are book-ready. To finish, students will revise the book as a whole and make a publication plan.
Live video conference: This workshop will be held via our online video conferencing platform, Zoom. You can view brief tutorials on using the platform here. On the start date or the day before, participants will receive an email with login info (please check your spam if you don’t see it).
In this workshop you’ll learn:
- Craft an arc (or anti-arc) for your book
- Generate 8-10 new poems and develop strategies for generating more
- Revise and reimagine poems to make them book-ready
- Create a submissions plan for your book manuscript
Time requirements
- 2-4 hours per week outside of class
Materials
- Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded, by Molly McCully Brown
- Bestiary by Donika Kelly
- Ariel: The Restored Edition by Sylvia Plath
- Borderland Apocrypha by Anthony Cody
Additional optional texts depending on student’s chosen direction (list provided)
If you need an accommodation for this workshop, please contact us at access@writer.org. We will attempt to fulfill all requests, but advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility services.
