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The Poetry of Practice: Making Space for Poems

  • Mechanics' Hall 519 Congress Street Portland, ME, 04101 United States (map)

A 5-Week Poetry Workshop

Wednesdays: November 6-20, December 4th & 11th, 6-9 PM

This workshop will help poets at any level of experience establish or reestablish a regular poetry practice. Given the busyness of our lives and the urgency of the world's demands, reserving space for poetry is difficult for most of us. Community, clarity of intention, and self-reflection can help. In our initial session, we will explore what we want from poetry and practical ways to make space for it in our lives. Working with the essential elements of practice (space, time, sequence, and frequency) we will design individual practice rituals that will allow us to make poems every day. During our weekly sessions we will fine-tune our rituals, keep one another accountable, and share work and feedback. The goal of this workshop will be for each participant to leave with lots of new material, as well as a firmly-rooted writing practice that fits their particular life and poetic intentions. 

$275 Members/$475 Nonmembers


Kristen Case has published essays on Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and William and Henry James, and is the author of the book American Poetry and Poetic Practice: Crosscurrents from Emerson to Susan Howe (Camden House, 2011). She is co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Henry David Thoreau (in development, Oxford UP), William James and Literary Studies (forthcoming, Cambridge UP), Thoreau in an Age of Crisis: Uses and Abuses of An American Icon (Fink, 2021), 21|19: Contemporary Poets in the 19th Century Archive (Milkweed Editions, 2019), and Thoreau at 200: Essays and Reassessments (Cambridge UP, 2016) .  Kristen’s first poetry collection, Little Arias was published by New Issues Press in 2015. Her second collection, Principles of Economics, published by Switchback Books, won the 2018 Gatewood Prize. She is the recipient of the Maine Literary Award in Poetry (2016 and 2020), a MacDowell Fellowship, and the UMF Trustee Professorship. She is Executive Director of the Monson Arts Seminar and Director of Thoreau’s Kalendar: A Digital Archive of the Phenological Manuscripts of Henry David Thoreau. Her current book project is Keeping Time: Henry David Thoreau’s Kalendar (forthcoming, Milkweed Editions). She is Scholarship Research and Grants Manager at the Mitchell Institute, Maine’s premiere scholarship organization.


ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED
All MWPA workshops require advanced registration. We accept registration by phone, mail, and online via our website. We cannot guarantee registration in the final 24-hours before a workshop, and can rarely accommodate day-of registration.

PAYMENT & CANCELLATION POLICIES
If you need to withdraw from a class after registering for any reason, please email or call the MWPA immediately. You may be eligible for a partial refund or credit, depending on how far in advance you cancel. → MORE INFORMATION

QUESTIONS
For any questions regarding this workshop, please contact programs@mainewriters.org.

REGISTER BY PHONE
Call 207-200-7180 and register with your VISA or MasterCard.

REGISTER BY MAIL
If you prefer to pay by mail, please print this registration form (downloadable PDF) and mail it to the MWPA with a check or credit card information.

SCHOLARSHIP
The MWPA is proud to offer one partial scholarship to this workshop for members-only. Scholarships are awarded on a combination of need and merit. Application Due by October 22nd at 9:00 a.m.
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MWPA WORKSHOP POLICIES
Registration in any MWPA workshop, program, or event constitutes your agreement to our terms and conditions. → MORE INFORMATION