[ poetry ]

Tending & Untaming, with Caroline Harper New

  • 8 weeks long = $640 total / person

  • meets saturdays from 11-1pm eastern time

  • virtual (Zoom + Google Docs)

In this online poetry workshop, we will tend rather than tame our poems. This is a space for imaginative risk-taking, in which we explore how language can unlock a greater understanding of the self. As we confront that self through poetry and craft these expressions into art, many of our exercises will be geared toward “un-learning” the restrictions of formal writing. Together, we will mine memory and the mundane for inspiration, leaning into impulse and intuition as we incorporate creative practices into our daily lives.

Each week, we will discuss contemporary poems, engage in writing exercises, play with tenets of craft, and engage with each other’s poems in a workshop setting. As a workshop leader, I am committed to cultivating an intimate community where writers feel comfortable taking risks with subject matter as well as technique. Writers will have freedom over their workshop style, choosing to take the reins on their discussion or sit back and let conversation flow.

Poets of all levels and backgrounds are welcome to apply.

  • Caroline New is a poet and visual artist from rural Georgia. She is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Michigan, where she teaches first-year composition and creative writing. Before moving to Michigan, Caroline taught English in southeastern Madagascar and was involved with the Malagasy poetry community.

    Caroline’s own writing reckons with natural disaster, motherhood, and ancestry in the Gulf Coast, informed by a background in visual arts and anthropology. She thrives at the cross-roads of genre, medium, and discipline, and approaches teaching with an emphasis on exploration as well as craft. Other interests include nonfiction, translation, social science writing, application writing, environmental issues, and history.

    If her ankles were stronger, she would still be a ballet dancer, but for now she busies herself with bachata. More of her writing and experience can be found here.