Instructor Seth Leeper is a queer poet. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Foglifter, Waxwing, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, OnlyPoems, Salamander, and Greensboro Review. He holds an M.S. in Special Education from Pace University and B.A. in Creative Writing and Fashion Journalism from San Francisco State University. He is a candidate in the Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program at Randolph College and also teaches for Brooklyn Poets. 

Learn more about Seth in our Meet the Teaching Artist series.

Read and write vivid poems that feel like scenes from cinema.

In this five-week generative workshop, we will look at poems made more vivid by details employed by the poet that make each poem feel like a scene from a film.

We will consider how each poet uses details to ramp up the cinematic qualities of each poem so they feel like they’re being projected from the page and into our minds and living rooms.

Participants will be given prompts from which to generate new work based on each week’s readings and much of our virtual time will be spent workshopping these drafts.

Our shared experience will culminate in a fifth week showcase where participants can bring in a piece from the current week’s prompt(s) or share a more recent draft from a previous week to receive updated feedback on. 

We will read work from poets Ada Limon, Louise Gluck, Joan Kwon Glass, Martin Espada, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Ai, Kelly Russell Agadon, Gabrielle Bates, and others.

COURSE OUTLINE

Week 1: Scenes of the Pastoral
Week 2: Grief Scenes
Week 3: Scenes of Myth and Mundanity
Week 4: Leveraging Emotion and Tone in Scenes
Week 5: Poet Showcase

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

• Cinematic techniques such as flashbacks, zoom ins and zoom outs, and strategic framings dictate how the reader experiences the cinematic poem.
• Honing in on micro level details intensifies the macro level picture.
• Environmental details and the Speaker's voice can be manipulated to evoke

ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE: