[ poetry ]

Restriction and Release: Experimenting with Traditional Poetic Forms, with Mace Dent Johnson

  • 4 weeks long = $320 total / person

  • meets Sundays from noon-2pm eastern time

  • virtual (Zoom + Google Docs)

In this workshop students will learn a variety of traditional forms dating as far back as the 7th century and originating in writing traditions across the globe. Students will learn the rules of the Ghazal, Haibun, Sonnet, and Ballad, and reading the ways contemporary poets work with and against these rules, students will learn the generative and experimental potential of formal restriction and release. Students will take on one of each of these forms per week—learning the form, reading examples, trying their hand at the form, and workshopping their poems in that form the next week. This is a generative workshop. Writing in poetic form provides a container to work with and against and engages writers within centuries-old poetic traditions. By learning these four forms, learning ways poets have molded them to be their own, reading traditional examples of each form and contemporary models—especially those written by marginalized writers—students will learn how constraint can be inspiring, generative, and freeing.

  • Mace Dent Johnson is currently the Senior Poetry Fellow in the Creative Writing program at Washington University in Saint Louis, where they completed an MFA in Poetry. Their poetry draws on the natural world, social theory, personal narrative, etymology, and popular culture. They also have interest and experience in academic writing, playwriting, and lyric essay. They approach writing and editing with a focus on balance, variety, syntax, and the natural, conversational, and musical flow of language.

    Mace grew up in Columbus, Georgia and went to Harvard College, where they studied History and Literature. As an undergraduate, Mace was a Mellon-Mays Undergraduate Research Fellow, and they completed extensive research and academic writing training and execution. They received highest honors for their undergraduate thesis and were chosen for a fellowship at the Schomburg Center in Harlem.

    In their MFA, Mace completed a full-length poetry manuscript, receiving a senior fellowship after graduation. Mace is a Cave Canem Poetry Fellow, and they have published prose and poetry online and in print, appearing in the Nepantla Anthology, The New Republic, and them. magazine, among others.