Sports Poetry Writing Workshop with Matthew Johnson (Zoom)

This two-hour workshop from 12:00–2:00 p.m. (with a short break in between) will introduce participating writers to the growing field of sports poetry and provide practical tools for creating and sharing their work. Through readings of contemporary sports poems and guided writing discussions and exercises, attendees will explore how examining athletics can be transformed into poetry.

This workshop is grounded in a shared understanding that sports can function and serve as both personal experience and a cultural text. While participants may arrive with different relationships to sports, such as former/current athletes, fans, observers, or writers interested in the language and mythology of sports, the workshop creates space for exploring how athletics can intersect with identity, memory, place, and community through poetry.

This workshop will encourage writers to move beyond just celebration and nostalgia, but it will focus on using sports as an entry point into larger conversations around…