Whether you are new to poetic forms or have used them before, here’s an opportunity to learn more about harnessing their power, and to see why Richard Moore called them “the rule that liberates.” We will look at several time-honored poems in form (such as sonnets, villanelles, and triolets) and then do a group writing exercise. We’ll also experiment with creating nonce forms, and see how traditional forms can be varied and yet left recognizable. This workshop is adapted from longer courses that instructor Claudia Gary teaches at The Writer’s Center and elsewhere.
_________________

CLAUDIA GARY teaches workshops on Villanelle, Sonnet, Natural Meter, Persona Poems, Poetry vs. Trauma, etc., at The Writer’s Center (writer.org), currently via Zoom. Author of Humor Me (2006) and several chapbooks, most recently Genetic Revisionism (2019), she is also a health science writer, visual artist, and composer of tonal chamber music and art songs. Hundreds of her contemporary formal poems have been published internationally in journals and anthologies. Her chapbooks are available via the email address on her web page. Claudia’s 2022 article on setting poems to music, “Song as Conversation,” is online here.