Starts Sunday, February 1st, 2026

This class is limited to 12 students.

Any questions about this class? Use the Chat Button to talk with us. 

Instructor Renee Emerson is the author of the poetry collections Keeping Me Still, Threshing Floor, and Church Ladies. She is also the author of the chapbook The Commonplace Misfortunes of Everyday Plants and the middle-grade novel Why Silas Miller Must Learn to Ride a Bike. She holds an MFA in poetry from Boston University, where she was also awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize. She lives in the Midwest with her husband and children.

Limited to just 12 writers, this course is for poets who are interested in using poetry writing as therapy for grief. Open to all levels.

Grief resists language, but poetry can enter silence. In this six-week online workshop, we’ll study how poets have written out of grief and what craft choices make their work so resonant.

Each week, Renee will share poems, readings, and writing prompts designed to spark new drafts. We’ll talk about image, voice, and structure—and how these elements can shape experiences of loss into art.

You’ll be encouraged to share your work in a supportive space. By the end of the class, you’ll leave with six workshopped poems, a deeper understanding of how craft can carry grief, and fresh ways of approaching your own writing.

WRITING GOALS

In this course, students will generate six poems and have them workshopped.

CLASS FEEDBACK

Renee will provide a typed critique of six poems per student in the course of the class. Renee typically critiques line-by-line and includes a page of cumulative thoughts on the poem, advice on revision, and suggested magazines that may be interested in the poem.

READING MATERIALS

We will be reading poets Louise Glück, Sharon Olds, Natasha Trethewey, Seamus Heaney, and others. Renee will link all poems for this class in the interest of accessibility.

COURSE OUTLINE:

Week 1: Entering Grief Through Poetry

Week 2: The Language of Absence

Week 3: Memory as Material

Week 4: Metaphor and Transformation

Week 5: The Body and Grief

Week 6: Toward Healing / Toward Witness

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

• Generate a small portfolio of 6–8 new poem drafts that engage directly with themes of loss, memory, and resilience.
• Study how established poets such as Louise Glück, Sharon Olds, Natasha Trethewey, and Marie Howe use image, voice, and structure to shape experiences of grief.
• Practice a range of generative techniques and prompts that can be returned to in future writing projects.
• Develop a deeper understanding of how to balance the personal and the universal in poems of grief.
• Strengthen revision skills by experimenting with form and style, turning raw drafts into crafted pieces.
• Build confidence in sharing their work within a supportive writing community.

ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:

This class is asynchronous, meaning you complete the weekly assignments on your own schedule. There are no set meeting times in order to allow for greater participation; your cohort will consist of writers from across different time zones, which allows for a wonderful diversity of voices.

Along with your weekly deadlines, there is plenty of interaction with Renee and your peers within Wet Ink, our dedicated online classroom. Craft materials, lectures, reading assignments, and writing prompts are all available through the online classroom. Students also post work and provide and receive feedback within the online classroom environment.

You can finish the work as you see fit week-to-week, which is perfect for any schedule. There are discussion questions each week inspired by the assigned readings and topics in the lecture notes. Students are encouraged to take these wherever is most compelling and/or useful for them. Renee engages with these discussions throughout the week, and you will receive feedback from all assigned writing activities.

HOW DOES WET INK WORK?

Wet Ink was built and designed specifically for online writing classes. Wet Ink is private, easy to use, and very interactive. You can learn more about the Wet Ink platform by Watching a Class Demo.

• Instructor: Renee Emerson
• Starts Sunday, February 1st, 2026
  
• The course is fully online, allowing students to work according to their own schedule within weekly deadlines. Ahead of the class start date, the instructor will send you a link to our online classroom, provided via Wet Ink.
• This class is limited to 12 studnets.
• Tuition is $395 USD.