Ovid writes – quite cagily – about his time in exile, attributing it to carmen et error, “a poem and a mistake.” In this seven-week workshop for poets of all levels, we’ll dance with the mistakes in our work, using error (or at least the unexpected) as a way to productively destabilize our own creative process.

We’ll conduct this investigation through the lens of one of Ovid’s favorite subjects: love. Though you’re welcome to submit poetry of any theme or style for workshop, in our reading we’ll focus on poems of lovers queer and straight, of familial love, of gratitude and wonderment, and (as counterpoint and palate cleanser) poems of revenge, longing, and absence. Through them all, we’ll explore what makes poetry meant to convey strong emotion sing (and what makes it suck), while experimenting with the ways strange and unexpected digressions can make love and love poems – and their opposites – all too human. A sample of poets up for discussion include Elizabeth Bishop as well as young contemporaries Brandon Som, Ross Gay, and Solmaz Sharif. You’ll finish this class with a packet of freshly polished new poems, and additional first drafts borne of in-class writing exercises.