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.
YOU ONLY GET ONE CHANCE TO MAKE A FIRST IMPRESSION
Join award-winning poet John Sibley Williams for a two-hour generative workshop where we’ll examine how the right title sets a poem up for success. In this workshop, we will examine how titles (and epigraphs) can do the heavy lifting to work multiple levels, inform every stanza, tighten arguments, and provide a container for tension, revelation, and economy.
IN THIS WORKSHOP, YOU WILL:
Write titles so strong readers will return to them after the poem is over
Reframe thinking about the importance of a title
Gain confidence in building context before the first stanza
Learn how using metaphor as title can act as a vehicle for commentary
THE WORKSHOP INCLUDES:
· A two-hour session with poem exploration and Q&A
· Plenty of time to experiment with all new titles for your poems
· Various prompts and writing activities
· Active discussion of sample poems from diverse contemporary poets
· A chance to more intimately engage with a small, focused writing community
Are you interested in organizing a chapbook or poetry manuscript? This intensive manuscript workshop will teach participants different ways one can begin to compile a poetry manuscript. 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 chapbook or full-length, 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.
Topics include selecting the best title, focusing on your first and last pieces, finding the thematic threads in your writing, organizing the entire collection so that it reads smoothly, deciding which structure works best for you, and submitting individual pieces to magazines and the book as a whole to publishers and contests.
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
And I will be donating 50% of all your registration fees to an incredible local charity: Mother & Child Education Center!
Writing poetry about mothers and the experience of motherhood is not easy because the act of mothering/being mothered is both beautiful and complicated. As more writers explore the lessons unique to this deeply personal passage and bond, the audience for motherhood poetry expands. In this generative workshop, we will explore motherhood/mothering as transformation, read from a diverse selection of mother-poets, and discuss how and why motherhood matters are relevant to all readers.
Weekly topics include, but are not limited to: Mothers on Mothering, Pregnancy & Birth, Watching Them Grow, The Bad Days, The Good Days, Losing a Child, and Children on Their Mothers.
Using a variety of activities, you can expect to leave with at least two poem drafts each class, while also studying over a dozen poems each session from a wide variety of contemporary poets.
Devised recently by Terrance Hayes in homage to Gwendolyn Brooks, the innovative new Golden Shovel form enters into an intimate conversation with another poem by using their words as the final words in each of your lines. Part cento, part erasure, and all inspiration, the Golden Shovel is far more than merely serving as an exercise in poetic form. Golden Shovel poems are a fresh and vital way of embracing and documenting voices around us that must be heard and felt.
The golden shovel form has already been embraced by many influential poets since Hayes first invented the form, including Billy Collins, Andrew Motion, George Szirtes, Inua Ellams, Nick Makoha, Maxine Kumin, Langston Kerman, John Burnside, Raymond Antrobus, Don Share, Jacob Polley, Rita Dove, Nikki Giovanni, Phillip Levine, and Nikki Grimes.
This intimate workshop will include lessons, analysis of well-known Golden Shovels, in-class activities and writing, and sharing drafts with the class.
This workshop will delve deeply into a number of Oliver’s poems, including her themes, style, and perspective, focusing on her nature, animal-focused, aging, and compassionate 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 41-page handout!
The elegy in English, from the 1600s to its current articulations, has been employed as a genre of poetry in which poets mourn the dead. At the same time, directly or indirectly, poets often deploy this genre to critique and resist what they view as oppressive and violent aspects of their societies: religious, psychological, political, sexual, and moral.
In this class, we will read and write elegies, using our readings to inspire us and as a means of generating our own poems. We will explore the elegy’s function as a “work” of mourning for the dead, while widening this genre in order to reflect on not only the deceased, but on other kinds of loss we have experienced.
We will study diverse poems from poets such as W.S. Merwin, Dorianne Laux, Kevin Young, Ocean Vuong, Danez Smith, Marie Howe, Roger Reeves, Claudia Emerson, Walt Whitman, and many more to see how they successfully explore themselves and the world through the elegy.
THE WORKSHOP INCLUDES:
· Two 150-minute sessions with poem exploration and Q&A
· Multiple prompts and writing activities each session
· Bonus sample poems provided between sessions
· Active discussion of sample poems from diverse contemporary poets
· A chance to more intimately engage with a small, focused writing community
We are currently enjoying a small press renaissance, with countless publishing options for emerging authors. From contests to reputable publishers to self-publishers to handmade, locally printed, limited editions of your work, the world has never been more open to an author’s specific vision.
Join award-winning poet and literary agent John Sibley Williams for this informative workshop exploring the ins-and-outs of publishing your manuscript. Topics include:
· Should you approach agents, publishers, or both?
· How can you research and pitch to publishers?
· Who should you ask for blurbs and how to approach them?
· What are the differences/benefits/drawbacks of a traditional publisher, a hybrid publisher, and self-publishing?
· Should you submit to book contests?
· What does a fair book contract look like?
· What are some publisher red flags?
· Will you be responsible for designing the cover?
· Will you be provided with editing help? If not, should you look for a good editor?
· Will the publisher help you with marketing? Will they set up readings for you?
· What is the role of a publicist? How common is it for poets to employ a publicist?
For writers of both poetry and prose, “The Ins & Outs of Book Publishing” will help demystify the publishing process in all its various facets! And there will be plenty of time for your unique questions throughout too.