Poetry Workshop Information + Registration

Registration for the Harvest Writers Retreat is now closed.

Endoskeleton vs. Exoskeleton

A Poetry Workshop with Jeffrey Thomson

No small part of the power of poetry comes from the persistent link between form and content. In this workshop we will look at external forms and internal occasions for poems. We will explore how poets use and alter forms (and the ways they create their own) in the search for meaning and resonance. We will look at both traditional and contemporary ways of defining the form of the poem. We will also write our own poems in response. You will learn to access the poetic tradition and add your own voice to the long chain of writers as you maneuver within that tradition.

We will focus on writing new drafts, but each participant should bring at least one poem that she or he wants to revise in fresh ways. All levels welcome.

+ SUBMIT Participants are asked to please submit in advance three pages and up to three poems; i.e. one three-page poem, three one-page poems, etc. Email the manuscript no later than 9:00 a.m. on October 6 to director@mainewriters.org with the subject line: “POETRY MSS.”


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Jeffrey Thomson is a poet, memoirist, translator, and editor, and the author of ten books including Half/Life: New and Selected Poems from Alice James Books, the memoir fragile, The Belfast Notebooks, The Complete Poems of Catullus, and the edited collection From the Fishouse. His newest book is Museum of Objects Burned by the Souls in Purgatory (due out in May of 2022 from Alice James). He has been an NEA Fellow, the Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Poetry Centre at Queen’s University Belfast, and the Hodson Trust-John Carter Brown Fellow at Brown University. He is currently professor of creative writing at the University of Maine Farmington.


Registration

Registration is closed.

An important note: to ensure the safety of all participants, all registrants for the Harvest Writers Retreat must show proof of COVID-19 vaccination. Those who are not vaccinated are welcome to join us for our online workshops.