WELCOME TO THE HVWC CALENDAR: home of all our upcoming readings, events and workshops. You can view by list or calendar (see right menu to choose). Click the colored tabs below to show only specific options. Our workshops run as multi-session series or one-day “intensives.” Note, we list the multi-session courses on the first day they meet only. The full dates of the session are described in the course descriptions. You would need to scroll back to the start date if you needed to enroll for something already underway. But do let us know if you want to join something in midstream since we need the blessing of the instructor. Questions? Email us.
Writing your way into the unknown is the most thrilling aspect of poetry. If we already knew what we were going to say, there’d be no surprise and little excitement. The turn (or volta) is so essential that in some received forms, like the sonnet, there’s a specific place prescribed for it. But even in […]
“Who taught you to write in blood on my back? Who taught you to use your hands as branding irons? You have scored your name into my shoulders, referenced me with your mark. The pads of your fingers have become printing blocks, you tap a message on to my skin, tap meaning into my body.”― […]
In this 2-hour craft talk, we will discuss ekphrasis as well as examples of famous poems which include ekphrastic techniques (e.g. William Carlos Williams, "Landscape With the Fall of Icarus" and Anne Sexton "The Starry Night"). We will also read "The Liturgy of the Flesh" (from the chapbook Gifts Without Wrapping. The poem is a […]
We’ll focus on the Very Short Poem, the highly pressurized lyric that casts off a resonance far bigger than its real estate. We’re going to explore how a poem can become more focused and intense with strategies of inference, implication, subordination, and exclusion. We’ll also explore the different kinds of projects the short poem can […]
Racism, economic inequality, the climate crisis, trauma: from the global to the personal, from headlines to history, our times and lives present us with troubling issues that may seem hard to address in poems. In the first hour of this four-hour workshop, I’ll use published poems to discuss ways to enter these difficult territories, and poetic […]
This one-day seminar investigates what Robert Hass, in his not so small Little Book on Form, describes as the “formal imagination.” In other words, we will explore how a poem’s sound, shape, and visual appearance on the page coalesce to produce meaning or emotion for the reader. In doing so, we will strive to reconceive some […]
This interactive class, led by a longtime independent book editor and writer in the publishing world, helps you get the navigational tools you need to chart a path from being a writer who publishes individual stories, poems, articles, and essays to becoming the author of a published book. We’ll collaboratively explore the vast changes occurring in […]