24PearlStreet Workshops and Events
LIVE via Zoom: 11am-1pm (Eastern Time)
As a free verse poet, do you feel a bit…insecure…when it comes to meter, rhyme schemes, and that ubiquitous, beautiful, ever-challenging form known as the sonnet? This your chance to learn—or relearn—the rules, essence, and possibilities of this versatile and ever-evolving form.
We’ll be starting from square one, exploring a bit of the history and practicing writing the almighty iambic pentameter with exercises to build your skills. We’ll be reading a lot of sonnets, on the page and aloud, to keep the rhythms in our heads. We’ll take a look at sonnets written from the margins of the Western European tradition, and consider how Black and women writers, especially, have made of this “scanty plot of ground” (Wordsworth) a site of resistance and liberation. By the end of our five-day intensive, you’ll have a solid appreciation and knowledge of the traditional sonnet. You’ll also have an understanding of the sonnet’s evolution in contemporary practice. After this session, you’ll be well on your way to writing sonnets of your own, and lots of inspiration for more.
Post-class, I’ll email you my comments on one of your sonnets. This is a mix of lecture, discussion, and focused, fun writing exercises.
Biography
Kim Addonizio is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose. Her most recent poetry collection is Now We’re Getting Somewhere (W.W. Norton). Her memoir-in-essays, Bukowski in a Sundress, was published by Penguin. She has received NEA and Guggenheim Fellowships, Pushcart Prizes in both poetry and the essay, and her poetry has been widely translated and anthologized. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Poetry, The Sun, the Times Literary Supplement (UK), and numerous literary journals. Tell Me was a National Book Award Finalist in poetry. She performs and teaches internationally at colleges, universities, festivals and conferences, and currently lives in Oakland, CA, where she teaches private workshops.
