Breaking the Border: Visual Poetics

We’ve moved online! All workshops are conducted via Zoom, a virtual platform that allows you to participate in exercises and contribute to group conversation. For morning and noontime workshops, your Zoom link will be sent the day before. For afternoon and evening workshops, your Zoom link will be sent the day of, at least one hour prior to the start of your workshop. 

Member Price: $65
Deadline to Register: September 25, 5 pm
Instructor: Keith Wilson

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what about a picture made from a thousand words? Poems that use typography, white space, and such non-textual visual elements as illustration, color, and graphic design are at the forefront of contemporary poetry. Many of us are familiar with the “concrete poem,” but what else can thinking about poetry as a visual form do for your writing? In this workshop, we will look at examples of visual poems and do exercises for brainstorming and writing. By the end, you will have drafted at least one poem that uses visual elements as well as traditional poetry techniques.

Keith S. Wilson is a game designer, an Affrilachian Poet, and a Cave Canem fellow. A recipient of an NEA Fellowship, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, and an Illinois Arts Council Agency Award, he has been awarded Kenyon Review and Stegner Fellowships, as well as fellowships or grants from Bread Loaf, Tin House, the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center, Millay Colony, and James Merrill House, among others. Wilson’s poetry won the Rumi Prize and has been anthologized in Best New Poets and Best of the Net. The New York Times recognized his debut collection, Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love (Copper Canyon, 2020), as “a best new book of poetry.”