We are pleased to announce our latest Image Intensive, an opportunity to dive deeper into your craft, guided by faculty from our community who understand the unique impulses and challenges facing artists at the intersection of art, faith, and mystery.

This Image Intensive concentrates on spiritual meditation and confrontation through involved discussions of a wide range of poems published in Image Journal over the last two years. We will explore spiritual and devotional poems as well as poems of doubt; poems that retell, reinterpret, or struggle against scriptural narratives in diverse theological and religious traditions; poems that plunge into the mysteries of faith and belief. We’ll read (and model our writing on) poems from Christian, Jewish, Hindu and other traditions. We’ll read several Image poems each class and do in-class generative writing in relation to the forms, poetics, themes, and subject matters they suggest as possibilities. Some of the authors of these poems will visit the class on Zoom to tell us about the origin and revisions of their poems, and to answer class questions about their work.

Along the way we’ll all draft and revise four poems (one per week), beginning with generative writing exercises based on the readings and developing into complete drafts and then revised versions.

This intensive will meet twice each week on 90-minute Zoom sessions.

Meeting Schedule:
Week 1: October 14 & 16
Week 2: October 21 & 23
Week 3: October 28 & 30
Week 4: November 4 & 6

Week One | Spiritual Metaphors: develop an original and surprising metaphor for the nature of your spiritual life.

Week Two | Sacred Narratives: retell from your own point of view a scriptural parable or narrative that particularly fascinates you or write a persona poem in the voice of a figure from scripture.

Weeks Three | Religious Images: use one of your favorite pieces of religious visual art to meditate on the scene while practicing imagery and detail.

Week Five | Prayerful Poems: craft an intimate and experimental prayer-poem, using fragmentation and syntactic disruptions to embody the longing and conflict of the spiritual need.

We will share and provide feedback on many of these developing drafts in class, and each student will have the opportunity to meet 1:1 with the course instructor on an individual Zoom call to discuss all four poems the student has written during the class in detail, along with recommendations for further revision to bring them to publishable quality. We’ll practice specific revision techniques to push your early drafts into more original, accomplished, and exciting versions.

We will be exploring these ideas and reading and writing together in an intimate cohort setting, capped at 12 students, which will include:

• Eight sessions: two 90-minute Zoom sessions each week for four weeks, exploring ideas, giving feedback, and reading and writing together in an intimate and supportive setting.
• Generative writing opportunities, offering you new ways to explore your craft.
• Guest instructors will join the class to speak on their published works in Image, to share their creative practices, and to answer questions.
• Individual poetry review and feedback with Bruce Beasley.

Audience:
This class is for anyone (at any experience level with poetry) who wants a cohort and 1:1 feedback, challenging writing prompts, intimate discussions of a wide range of contemporary poetry from a variety of poets and positions of faith and/or doubt, and hands-on exploration of ways many leading contemporary poets are engaging with spiritual themes, questions of faith and doubt, and crucial questions of finding meaning in our lives.