Planning for Surprise: A Virtual Poetry Workshop

Robert Frost famously said of poetry, “No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”  In other words: if we want our readers to be swept away by the delight of an unexpected turn, we must first stumble upon, and be surprised by, that turn on our own. But how exactly can we plan to surprise ourselves? How do we move away from what we wanted to say in order to access the things we didn’t know we needed to say? Over the course of four weeks, this virtual workshop will introduce you to poem-shapes and methods of unfolding language that are designed to catch your mind off guard, allowing you to step into new and unexpected areas of thought. We’ll discuss generating new poems as well as revising drafts in a way that makes them feel fun, fresh, and surprising through a close look at two poetic forms and two poetic structures.

Instructor

Chad Abushanab's poetry has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Best New Poets, The Sewanee Review, Ecotone, The Believer, among many others. His debut collection of poems, The Last Visit, won the Donald Justice Poetry Prize and was published by Autumn House Press. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Bemidji State University in Minnesota. Visit www.chadabushanab.com for more information.