Hudson Valley Writers Center

Please note that this workshop is now sold out! Thanks for all the interest. If you want to be put on the waiting list for this workshop, or have questions about other workshop options, please email [email protected] Poetry professor and guru, Rachel Hadas, will teach a craft class & workshop on the sonnet via Zoom. Class size is capped at 12 students. Zoom login instructions will be emailed at the time of workshop registration. Please check spam filters or email…

Join award-winning poet, professor, and director of the Colrain Manuscript Conference, Joan Houlihan, as she teaches a one-day craft class on the importance of revision. NB: This class will be taught via Zoom and capped at 15. Register right away because Joan's classes always sell out. This class will be taught online using Zoom. Login instructions will be emailed at the time of workshop registration. Please check spam filters or email [email protected] with questions. More than any of the other writing arts, poetry…

From epic tales of migration to intimate childhood cameos, family history can provide rich and challenging material for poets. How does time, perspective, character, form and questions of truth/authority effect a writer’s efforts to turn private family experiences into poetry that is meaningful beyond the familial circle? In this generative workshop we’ll explore the unique pleasures and perils of bringing family memories and members to life in verse. We will begin by investigating how a variety of well-known poets have…

Please note that this workshop is now sold out! Thanks for all the interest. If you want to be put on the waiting list for this workshop, or have questions about other workshop options, please email [email protected] In honor of the much-awaited publication of 100 Poems to Break Your Heart by Edward Hirsch (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (March 30, 2021), the Hudson Valley Writers Center has asked Hirsch to teach a craft class on writing poems that transform grief into art.…

Among other things, Edward Hirsch is known for his graduate class on European poetry in translation at NYU. He will adapt that class to a craft talk for us at the Hudson Valley Writers Center, on Zoom. This class will be capped at 20. Please note: This class will be on Zoom. Zoom login information will be emailed at the time of registration (please check spam/promotions filter). Please email [email protected] with any questions. There are two Altman Persons of Color…

In many civilizations of the ancient world, fire was often thought to be one of the four elements of being. One can still see how central it is to our daily experience. Just think of all the fire, both literal and metaphorical, that we have within and around us. Think of the wildfires we see in the forests or plains, or think of starting a campfire and the smoke rising, and later the ashes we douse and scatter. Think of…

This Workshop is designed to engage participants with contemporary poets, many of whom are writers of color, and their different strategies to generate new work. The Workshop will be in two parts: #1.  Participants will look at poems in the packet and discuss the work of those poets with whom they unfamiliar.  #2.  We will use vocabulary from two or three of the poems to generate new work. We will use poems as catalyst for new works. Poems by Joy Harjo,…

In his essay “The Figure a Poem Makes,” Robert Frost writes that a poem “begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life—not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.” But how do we discover first lines that keep us writing? How do we revise our first…