This Hopkins at Home course will be an immersion in the craft of writing poetry. Participants will experiment with a variety of poetic styles and techniques. As a class, we will explore several classic and contemporary poems every week, discussing each poet’s use of devices like assonance, refrain, and metaphor; we’ll pay especially close attention to how a poem can establish expectations in the reader’s mind, and then move the reader by either gratifying or subverting those expectations.

We’ll also talk about how to find inspiration for your poetry, how to avoid cliché, and how to create musical effects through language.

There will be a few writing exercises to attempt between sessions. Participants in the course will be encouraged, but not required, to share the poems that they develop in response to the exercises.