Small but Mighty
Sometimes the smallest poems have the biggest hearts. In this generative workshop, we’ll concentrate on creating small but mighty poems, using such models as Dickinson and Basho, Clifton, Hirshfield, and others. Together, in a supportive environment, we’ll unlock the large spirits often contained within brief poems and develop the power of compression, learn how to make leaps within a limited frame, and examine what is left unsaid against what is. In addition to writing new poems, we’ll also look at a longer poem or two of ours to find its essence, its heartbeat, and revise toward that end. The instructor will provide feedback every day, along with a personalized letter to each participant at week’s end.
BIOGRAPHY
Paula Bohince is the author of three poetry collections, all from Sarabande. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, Granta, The TLS, and Best American Poetry. She has been the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholar, the Dartmouth Poet in Residence at The Frost Place, a Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Amy Clampitt House Resident Fellow, a Hawthornden Fellow, and a “Discovery”/The Nation Award recipient. She has taught at New York University, the New School, and elsewhere.