"We look at the world once, in childhood," wrote poet Louise Glück. "The rest is memory." Poetry’s associative qualities are perhaps uniquely suited to capturing our remembrances of childhood: the drama and melancholy of family life, our first observations of landscapes and urban environments, and ultimately, the formation of the self.

 

In this daylong workshop, we will read several poets that write about the experience of childhood with deep rigor, including Glück, Lyn Hejinian, Yusef Komunyakaa, Bhanu Kapil, Dianne Suess, and Frank Stanford. We’ll then use these poems to draft our own poems about early memories, and workshop our poems as a group. Participants will leave with suggestions for revision strategies and writing exercises to continue their projects. 

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About the Instructor:

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Madeleine Cravens is the author of the poetry collection Pleasure Principle (Scribner, 2024). Her poems can be found in The New Yorker, The Nation, Kenyon Review, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. She was a 2022-2024 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and received her M.F.A. from Columbia University, where she was a Max Ritvo Poetry Fellow. She has been the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the New York State Summer Writers’ Institute. She was raised in Brooklyn and currently lives in Oakland.

 

Click here to learn more about Madeleine.

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LEFT MARGIN LIT'S CANCELLATION/REFUND POLICY:

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If you find that you can't take a class for which you registered, you may request a refund, less a $25 administrative fee, at least 48 hours prior to the start of the first class session. If a class doesn't reach its minimum enrollment, it will be cancelled, and all students will receive full refunds.