Description
Dates: March 2, 9, 16, 23 & April 6, 13
Time: 5-7 pm Eastern, Virtual
7 Spots Left
When revising your work, do you ever wonder if you are actually improving the poem, or simply moving things around to create something new? How do you know when to trust the advice that your community of readers offer? In this six-week workshop, we will explore a practical and replicable strategy for strengthening your poems – one rooted in identifying and understanding the “why” of the process, not just the “how”. Through close readings of contemporary texts, open discussions, and generative prompts, we will cover how to find the “wisdom” of your poem (and what that means), as well as the elements that are in-service to that “wisdom”—including well-crafted images, compression and diction, framing the lens, and shaping the poem on the page. Please bring a packet of your poems (5-10) that could benefit from revision and be prepared to write. By the end of the course, you will have expanded your understanding of how to make choices to clarify your poems and think critically about your own work.
Megan Merchant (she/her) is the owner of the editing, manuscript consultation, and mentoring business Shiversong and holds an M.F.A. degree in International Creative Writing from UNLV. She is a visual artist and the author of three full-length poetry collections with Glass Lyre Press: Gravel Ghosts (2016), The Dark’s Humming (2015 Lyrebird Award), Grief Flowers (2018), four chapbooks, and a children’s book, These Words I Shaped for You (Penguin Random House). A Slow Indwelling, a book of epistolary poems, was also recently released with Harbor Editions. Her book, Before the Fevered Snow, came into the world in April 2020 with Stillhouse Press (NYT New & Noteworthy). She was awarded the 2016-2017 COG Literary Award, judged by Juan Felipe Herrera, the 2018 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize, second place in the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, the Inaugural Michelle Boisseau Prize, a finalist in the 2024 Montreal International Poetry Prize, and, most recently, the New American Poetry Prize for her full-length collection Hortensia, in winter. She is the Editor of Pirene’s Fountain.
