Elizabeth Bishop’s Best Practice: Imperfection as Creative Opportunity with Suzanne Cleary (via Zoom)

Elizabeth Bishop was a perfectionist when it came to writing and publishing her poetry. She would work on a poem for years before letting The New Yorker pry it away from her. Yet, as a subject, imperfection fueled Bishop’s imagination and led to many of her most engaging poems. We will read several of Bishop’s poems that are propelled by her examination of imperfection—and you’ll leave with some writing prompts that Bishop herself might suggest adding to your own writing practice.

Suzanne Cleary’s The Odds (New York Quarterly Books 2025) was selected by Jan Beatty as winner of the 2024 Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award. Her previous books are Beauty Mark and Crude Angel (BkMk Press) and Keeping Time and Trick Pear (Carnegie Mellon UP). Her awards include a Pushcart Prize, the John Ciardi Prize, and the Cecil Hemley Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America. She is grateful for fellowships from the…