“What’s To Love About the Poetic Line?” (A Poetry Writing Workshop)
Santa Fe Summer Writers Conference
- Date: Saturday, July 30 and Sunday, July 31
- Times: 10am-12noon, 2pm-4pm, both days
- Location: Drury Plaza Hotel, Santa Fe, NM
Description: The first visual clue that we are in the presence of a poem is language defying the dictates of margins. In poetry, the line ends where the poem compels the poet to say it must. Sometimes words flood the page, more often they spin and eddy, they splash and disperse, or make an abrupt staccato turn to prove their point. The word “verse” derives from the Latin and contains the meanings turn and toward. In poetry, each turn of the line is a turn toward deeper meaning. How do we determine when and why to turn or break each line in our poems? In this workshop, we’ll focus on options and approaches inherent to the contemporary free-verse line and we’ll look at poems that exemplify those choices in ways that are by turns sensory, conceptual, and emotional. In each case, one turn in the river at a time, we’ll have the thrill of expanding our range of formal options, while experimenting with the exciting possibilities that an understanding of the poetic line and space on the page have to offer. This workshop is for beginning and intermediate poets, free-writers who are interested in giving shape to that flood of words in their notebooks, as well as for anyone who has experience writing poems and wishes to expand their range of expression and knowledge of craft, while having fun.
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