Class Starts  Tuesday, March 4th, 2025

This class will meet via Zoom on Tuesdays at 6 pm-8 pm EST

Any questions about this class? Use the Chat Button (lower left) to talk with us.

If you’ve ever been curious about poetry but had no idea where to start, this course is for you. Here, you’ll be introduced to some of the basic tenets of poetry and get a chance to try your hand at it in a supportive environment.

This course is for those who consider themselves true beginners in the realm of poetry. We will cover both the “nuts and bolts” of a poem, as well as the more watery aspects of the form, specifically focusing on how poems allow us different avenues towards “knowing.”

All writers, but especially the poet, could be considered sculptors in the way that they manipulate both physical material (letters, white space, shape) and abstract material (collective memory, emotion). Our goal by the end of this course is to have a better understanding of how to work with the tools available to the poet.

Because this is an introductory course, there will be no traditional peer workshops. Instead, students will submit 1-2 poems per week to the instructor, who will then give personalized feedback. This feedback will be generative, meant to move towards greater understanding and curiosity of the poem’s movements.

Course texts include Triggering Town, Richard Hugo; Poems by Aracelis Girmay; Poems by Dianne Seuss; Poems by Linda Gregg; Poems by Terrance Hayes ….etc.! All assigned texts will be compiled into packets by the instructor; students will not need to purchase anything.

Instructor Kristi Stout is a writer living in North Carolina. Her work has been published in Poetry, The Rumpus, Small Orange, and elsewhere.

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

COURSE OUTLINE:

• Week 1: What makes a poem? This week we will look at prose poems and consider what it is about the language that takes it into poem territory. We will also cover “how to read a poem.”
• Week 2: Reaching into different ways of knowing. This week we will consider four different ways of knowing: heart, mind, body, spirit. We will read poems that embody these four different approaches and consider where we tend to gravitate towards, and where we might expand.
• Week 3: Mechanics of a poem. (breaking the line, blank space, etc.) While before we were considering the more theoretical elements of the poem, this week we will get into the “nuts and bolts” – there will be special emphasis placed on the different motivations for breaking the line.
• Week 4: Editing a poem. This week we will explore the editing process, and how it compares to editing prose. We will reflect on how our thinking around poetry has changed in the last four weeks!

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

• Students will gain language to better articulate what they observe happening in the poems they come across.
• Students will be introduced to a wide variety of poems and gain a better understanding of the tradition they are working within.
• Students will write 4-8 poems based off of generative prompts.
• Students will walk away with a better understanding of the choices available to them in a poem (i.e. how to use tools like the line break, sound, and so on).

TESTIMONIALS:

"I really appreciated Ms. Stout because she was very enthusiastic with what she was teaching... She was also always willing to help and I felt like she genuinely cared about each and every one of her students."

"Ms. Stout is amazing. I thoroughly enjoyed her class, which was surprising to me because I never really enjoyed an "English" class. She was incredibly understanding and taught me more about writing than any of my teachers did in high school. She taught me that I am actually not awful at writing, but that I was never given the freedom to write. She had a mutual respect for all of us students and it made the atmosphere in the classroom great."

"Kristi is genuinely a teacher that makes me feel at home in class... she's always so passionate about what she's teaching and unlike any other class that just comes and goes like an assembly line, I feel so much more engaged in class and embraced because she cares about every one of us and making learning English much more interesting than it sounds."

ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:

This class meets weekly via Zoom. Come prepared for a super fun class with live interaction on Zoom each week and plenty of writing, reading, and talking!

PAYMENT OPTIONS:

Tuition is $299 USD. You can pay for the course in full or use Shop Pay or Affirm to pay over time with equal Monthly Payments. Both options are available at checkout.

• Instructor:  Kristi Stout
• This seminar will meet on Tuesday, March 4th, 2025
• Live Seminar via Zoom 6:00PM - 8:00 PM EST
• Tuition is $299 USD

Contact us HERE if you have any questions about this class.