Class Description
This class will provide an introduction to the urbane, sharply observed, associative, and ambulatory methods of poets who take the shoe leather express through urban and natural settings, with in-class readings of poems by Charles Baudelaire, William Carlos Williams, Robert Lowell, Frank O'Hara, Pablo Neruda, and Federico Garcia Lorca.
Bring your journals and notes on walking and come prepared to spend some time out with your notebooks in the city. The class will feature some introductory comments by the instructor on using a notebook to foster improvisation and observation, as well as in-class reading and discussion of poems and their various craft strategies. There will be a ninety-minute break to allow students to do some exploring of the neighborhoods around the Common, eat lunch, and also to do some writing either with or without a prompt. During this interlude, the instructor will read and prepare brief individual comments on student work. The final parts of the class will be devoted to small group discussion of student work written during class or before class. There will also be a full-class reading and brief discussions of student work.
Before coming to class, you can practice writing drafts of poems about things you remember seeing after walking, and you'll have the option of bringing in a previously written poem as well. You'll leave class with a refreshed sense of the possibilities of landscape and insights into possible new processes and techniques of poetry.
Thanks to the excellent literary citizenship of our donors, scholarships are available for all GrubStreet classes. To apply, click the gray "APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIP" button. In order to be considered for a scholarship, you must complete your application at least one week before the start date of a class. Please await our scholarship committee's decision before registering for the class. We cannot hold spots in classes, so the sooner you apply, the better. Scholarships cannot be applied retroactively.
For more detailed information about GrubStreet scholarships, including how to contribute to scholarship funds for other students, click here.
This class will take place using Zoom videoconferencing. About 15 minutes before your class is scheduled to begin, you'll receive an email from your instructor with a link to join the class meeting!
Zoom Participation:
Students are not required to turn their camera on, but are encouraged to participate any way they feel comfortable through functions such as the live chat, emoji reactions, and unmuting the microphone. Learn more about using Zoom here.
Zoom Accessibility:
We ask that instructors enable closed captioning and send a transcript of the session after class. You can also enable closed captioning at any time during the meeting. If your instructor forgets to send the transcript, just send ’em an email!