Unless otherwise noted, all workshops are held via Zoom.
Please email jswilliams1307@gmail.com to register.
Accepted forms of payment: PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, or mailed check.
About the Workshop:
Are you working on a poetry manuscript or hoping to start one soon? Whether you only have a handful of poems or a book draft, this intensive workshop will teach poets different ways to create a poetry manuscript from the ground up, as well as how best to target publishers. Whatever stage you’re currently at, the goal is to move from composition through ordering and polishing all the way to publication….in one winter! And it can start at any point….today or next month!
Further information is farther below, but here are the main highlights:
· A detailed 60-page workbook including everything from poem composition to collection formatting and publication, including 15 chapters, samples, and over a dozen exercises.
· Checklists, resources, templates, and activities to keep you moving forward.
· Six one-hour, one-on-one Zoom sessions over the winter to strategize together, discuss poems and ordering, and keep you on track.
· Ability to ask me questions over the entire winter.
· Both journal and publisher submission guidance, including cover letters and choosing the right publisher.
· (Optional): A professional critique of your complete collection (under 8,000 words)
** I will need to limit this to four poets this summer. **
Title: Building Your Collection: Winter Poetry Manuscript Workshop Series
Dates: Six one-on-one hour-long workshops tailored to your schedule at regular intervals throughout the winter!
Tuition: Including full book critique: $700
Workbook and six meetings only (no critique): $300
Abstract:
Join award-winning poet, teacher, editor, and literary agent John Sibley Williams for this intensive summer-long workshop that will take you all the way from inspiration to publication! This workshop is for poets ready to organize their work into a collection, as well as working toward journal and book publication.
Expect to view manuscript samples and discuss techniques that can be applied to the process.
We will explore all the ins-and-outs of organization and publishing a collection, from writing toward a given theme to setting and keeping to creative deadlines to learning how to submit smarter, not harder. Poets will be guided through a series of lessons and hands-on activities that each focus on a different aspect of creating, structuring, and finally publishing a new collection.
Workbook chapters include:
· How to Create and Maintain a Writing Schedule
· How to Create and Maintain a Poetry Journal
· Possible Structures
· Building Your Collection from Previously Written Work
· Finding the Threads
· Ordering Your Manuscript
· Polishing Your Manuscript
· Choosing the Right Title
· Epigraphs
· Formatting Your Manuscript
· Breaking Writer’s Block
· Submitting to Magazines
· How to Submit and Pitch to a Traditional Publisher
· Traditional Publishing
· Self-Publishing
· Checklists and Resources
Learn how to:
· Set writing goals and make creative action plans
· Make your work stand out
· Get more acceptances…and faster
· Submit smarter, not harder, to both journals and presses
· Discover the thematic threads in your writing and how to weave them across a collection
· Reshape previous poems to fit the themes and style of your collection
· Order poems within a manuscript for cohesion and flow
· Write powerful introductory and closing poems for your collection
· Choose the right book title, poem titles, and epigraphs
About the Workshop:
Similar to the goals of NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month), the aims of this self-paced class is to write 30 poems in 30 days. However, you might write one poem a day, or several poems in a day, and then give yourself a break. It’s totally up to you!
Whether you’re writing to a specific theme, assembling a group of poems for a chapbook, or you want to try writing a longer poetic sequence, this workshop is meant to support you with generative prompts and experiences to get you creating plenty of new work.
What This Workshop Provides:
· 30 Days’ Worth of Writing Prompts
· A professional critique of all 30 poems as you send them, be it one each day or all 30 at the end of the month
· Ability to ask John writing questions any time during the month
About the Workshop:
To celebrate the passing of one of our great American poets, Nikki Giovanni, I will be hosting a Deep Dive workshop on her poetry, analyzing and actively discussing their work…then writing based on multiple prompts inspired by that poet.
And I will be donating 100% of all your registration fees to an incredible local charity that I hope Nikki, as a lesbian woman of color, would deeply approve of: Black & Beyond the Binary Collective. Black & Beyond the Binary Collective builds the leadership, healing, and safety of Black-African transgender, queer, nonbinary, two-spirit, and intersex (TQN2SI+) Oregonians.
This workshop will delve deeply into a number of Giovanni’s poems, including her themes, style, and perspective, focusing on her love, relationship, and empathetic poems, via active group discussion and writing prompts and some writing time to help you engage more directly with and be inspired by her work…putting her lessons into practice. And the class includes an almost 40-page workbook!
About the Workshop:
To keep you consistently inspired, writing, and honing your craft, and to keep you engaged in a passionate poetic community, this month-long workshop series is aimed at helping you see your poems in a new light, broadening your vision, and improving your mechanics. Topics likely to arise include syntax, lineation, sound and rhythm, tone and mood, use of imagery, balancing the personal and universal, and other rhetorical strategies.
We will meet in a small, intimate, trusting group in which we can be honest and supportive of each other’s work. Each poet will compose one new poem each week, and we will start each session by reading and lightly critiquing it as a group. You will also receive intensive written feedback on each poem from me prior to the session. We will then move on to mini-lessons, fresh prompts, and hopefully some writing time!
About the Workshop:
Is there someone in your life, present or past (even future) that you’d like to write a poem for?
In this intensive generative workshop, we will explore the many facets of writing “love poetry”, from the ecstatic to the melancholic, from discovering that intimate connection to finding uniquely evocative ways of expressing that connection through poetry. We will study how best to show true emotion without leaning too heavily into sentimentality, as well exploring poems that deal with loss of a loved one. Poets we will discuss include Naomi Shihab Nye, Ada Limón, Marvin Bell, Danez Smith, Nicole Sealey, Stephen Dunn, Carl Adamshick, and others.
We will analyze diverse poems from contemporary poets, followed by hands-on writing activities, prompts, and plenty of in-class writing time.
About the Workshop:
Last year, I started a new series titled Deep Dives, in which we leap headfirst into a number of poems from one incredible poet, analyzing and actively discussing their work…then writing based on multiple prompts inspired by that poet. This new Deep Dive will be studying the poems of Sharon Olds!
This workshop will delve deeply into a number of Old’s poems, including her themes, style, and perspective, focusing on her love, relationship, and empathetic poems, via active group discussion and writing prompts and some writing time to help you engage more directly with and be inspired by her work…putting her lessons into practice. And the class includes a 30-page workbook!