I offer poetry workshop through organizations such as Hugo House and The Loft. I also offer informal group gatherings over Zoom. If you are interested to know more or would like me to facilitate a poetry workshops, please contact me.
Poetry in the Elements: Ecopoetry through Earth, Air, Water, Fire
Hugo House
Earth, air, fire, and water can form a foundation for writing poetry addressing climate change and climate crisis. In each session, we will engage with an element through focused class discussion, time to write a draft of a poem, and sharing those drafts with each other. Poetry will be discussed, along with media from activist artists, to guide us as we write poems of response, compassion, and connection to history, both personal and public.
Entangled: Composing and Revising Poetry Together
Hugo House
Composing and revising are entangled beings and don’t want to be separated. They feed knowledge to each other, connected by the underground network of your psyche. Each session, you’ll generate a new poem while posing revision provocations to poems generated in previous weeks. Writing and revising will occur in tandem, practicing putting on different hats within one writing session. You’ll create six poems and learn creative tools to bring to further poetic explosions. Bring a poem to the first class and we'll get started right away.
How to Write a Series of Poems
The Loft
In this class we’ll discuss aspects that make a group of poems a series—poems that speak to each other and cohere while maintaining individuality, breath, and space. Perfect for poets working on a group of poems they want to develop into a series, we’ll explore how to recognize the themes and threads within our existing poems as well as generate new poems during in-class writing exercises with an awareness of how they might join the larger series. Please arrive with a group of five or more poems you feel speak to each other and might be developed into a series.
Polish that Poem and Submit It
The Loft
A practical class on the ins and outs of submitting poems to literary journals, this class also looks at revising in terms of “polishing” and through exercises and reflective writing builds confidence for writers new to (or out of the practice of) submitting their work.
Surprise! How Taking Chances Can Invigorate Your Poetry
The Loft
Taking chances, common in experimental writing and art, has a lot to offer writers—even non-experimental ones. Try out some innovative ways of composing, such as collage, erasure, duplexes, golden shovels, centos, diaries, and bureaucratic forms and see how experiments with chance turn into crafted choices made by writers.
Revising to Regain Momentum
The Loft
Revision is the fun part, as any writer knows! Bring material you believe in, but for some reason has stalled, and learn strategies of revision that will hone what’s there while creating new writing. Doesn’t matter if it’s the first or fiftieth thing you’ve written—revision will show the way.
On Climate Justice: Reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
The Loft
Join us to read Braiding Sweetgrass, a book that offers strength and spiritual support by sharing indigenous wisdom and spelling out its connection to how we are going to survive. This class “For Readers”, will open up a conversation surrounding climate crisis, climate racism, and climate justice. Braiding Sweetgrass is a thoughtful introduction to thinking about climate justice for those new to the discussion and those seasoned in it.
In Good Company: An Extended Visit to Your Obsessions
The Loft
“Deplorable mania,” Samuel Beckett wrote, “when something happens, to inquire what.” In this class, we’ll not only “inquire what,” but we'll describe, twist, remake, and reveal an obsession. During these four weeks, participants will be encouraged to choose a topic—a person or place that haunts you, a landscape you continue to return to, a creature from your depths.
Gentle / Explosive / Flexible: Poet as Creative Citizen
The Ruth Asawa School of the Arts
Writing Skills Workshop
UC Berkeley Extension
Polish that Poem and Submit It!
The San Francisco Writer’s Grotto
Deplorable Mania: A poetry workshop
The San Francisco Writer’s Grotto
Surprise and Danger
The San Francisco Writer’s Grotto