2023 Summer Workshops
Why do these things feel impossible to write? How can a poem risk vulnerability without crushing us under the weight of sentimentality? Why are so many love poems so very sad? How can the abstract experience of a specific emotion be made tangible? How can you write a poem that will make someone fall in love with you? This class will answer each of those questions except for the last one. This will be a generative workshop. We’ll work to emerge one week later with new poems and full hearts.
Biography
Matthew Olzmann is the author of Constellation Route and two previous collections of poems, Mezzanines and Contradictions in the Design. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, and Kundiman, Olzmann's poems have appeared in the New York Times, Best American Poetry, the Pushcart Prizes, New England Review and elsewhere. He teaches at Dartmouth College and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.