How do we write poems about this moment, about right now, about global warming and walls and guns and oceans filled with plastic? How do we balance the historic with the lyric, the personal with the political? How can we make art from witness?

In this workshop we will read poems by Ada Limón, Terrance Hayes, Victoria Chang, and Mark Doty, in addition to many others, and write and respond to poems that explore ruin and reckoning.

Paul Guest is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Because Everything Is Terrible, and a memoir, One More Theory About Happiness. His writing has appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, The Paris Review, Tin House, Slate, New England Review, The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and numerous other publications. A Guggenheim Fellow and Whiting Award winner, he lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.