Wednesdays 6-8PM over Zoom, plus 1 additional hour asynchronous instruction per week
9/14, 9/21, 9/28, 10/5, 10/12, 10/26, 11/2, 11/9
$400 with financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
Applications open August 15th. Apply by August 30th, 11:59pm, using the link below, including for financial aid.
Please note: if accepted, payment is due 9/6 by 5pm. 

This Foundations of Poetry course approaches poetry through the lens of attention--the idea that writing can help us attend more carefully to the world around us. This approach is linked to the intersection of writing process and productivity culture; the prompts for the course will resemble the daily writing exercises found here. The approach revolves around regular practice rather than production, and as a class we will endeavor to create renewed connection to the parts of our brains and spirits that make art.

Each week will focus on a core aspect of poetry--image, lineation, sound, etc--and include a variety of prompts and a set of readings. We'll also work on revision techniques that open up possibilities for the work in terms of content, shape, and so on. At the end of the session, writers will have a strong initial understanding of those central techniques of poetry, and they will have drafted at least 8 poems. Writers will also be able to talk about how some of the techniques are at work in their own poems, in published work, and in their classmates' drafts. Perhaps even more importantly than tangible finished products, writers will leave the course with a renewed connection to their creative brain and writing practice, as well as practical ways to make regular, sustained writing part of their life.

Nancy Reddy is the author of Pocket Universe (LSU, 2022); Double Jinx (Milkweed Editions, 2015), a 2014 winner of the National Poetry Series; and Acadiana (Black Lawrence Press, 2018). With Emily Pérez, she’s co-editor of The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood (UGA, 2022). Her essays have appeared in Slate, Poets & Writers, Electric Literature, Romper, Brevity, The Millions, and elsewhere. The recipient of a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and grants from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Sustainable Arts Foundation, she teaches writing at Stockton University.