Poetry 101 Series with Anastasia Nikolis: May/June

Take the full series of Poetry 101 workshops at a reduced price

Members $80 | General Public $95

Poetry 101: Poetic Line through Louise Glück
7 – 8:30 pm, May 26

Line breaks give poetry its hallmark appearance on the page, turning blocks of text into short, neat lines. But line breaks aren’t made by randomly hitting the return key on your keyboard. When used well, they expand the logic of the preceding line or subvert the meaning of a sentence in order to create tension and drama. In this workshop, we will look at an array of examples from  W.S. Merwin and Kaveh Akbar, as well as several poems from the spring session’s featured poet, recent Nobel prizewinner Louise Glück. We will refer to James Longenbach’s The Art of the Poetic Line to see how line breaks work and why they are an essential item in the poet’s toolbox. 

Poetry 101: Poetic Form and Content through Louise Glück
7 – 8:30 pm, June 2

Robert Frost said that free verse poetry is like playing tennis without a net. In actuality, free verse poets have to make their own nets. In this workshop, we will talk about the unique way that form and content define one another in free verse poetry, and discuss how formal poetic attributes can be used to amplify, downplay, expand, and interrogate certain topics and ideas. We will look at examples from Natalie Diaz and Evie Shockley, as well as poems from the spring session’s featured poet, 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature winner, Louise Glück.

Poetry 101: Poetic Endings through Louise Glück
7 – 8:30 pm, June 9

How do poems end? What makes a poem’s ending feel satisfying and complete? Ending any piece of writing is tough, and ending a poem is no different. In this workshop, we will talk about creating appetite and expectation throughout a poem, and how to satisfy or disrupt those expectations at a poem’s end. We will look at an array of example poems from contemporary poets, including many from this session’s featured poet, 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature winner, Louise Glück, to learn how to end poems with anything from a bang to a whimper.

Anastasia Nikolis is a scholar, writer, and teacher. She holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Rochester, where she focused on 20th-21st-century American poetry. She is the Poetry Editor for the literary translation publisher, Open Letter Books, and teaches courses in writing, literature, and gender studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology and St. John Fisher College. www.anastasianikolis.com  

Purchase Louise Glück’s books at Ampersand Books:
The Wild Iris
Faithful and Virtuous Night: Poems
Poems: 1962 – 2012