About PVWW's Year-Long Poetry Manuscript Group (with Carolyn Zaikowski)

    This workshop is designed for both poets who have a manuscript in progress and poets who are just beginning one and would like to get jump-started. By the end of the year, participants will have a solid, polished draft of either a chapbook-length (approx. 30 pages) or full-length (approx. 60-70 pages) poetry manuscript. To this end, we will spend time closely studying published poets to learn about craft and context, and we will do a wide variety of in-class and at-home generative prompts to create a large pool to pull our very best work from for revision and polishing. We will set active, clear goals, and learn what it means to generate, write, and revise with intention as a serious poet. In short, we will build a community of poets committed to supporting one another through the difficult and sometimes lonely process of creating a finished product. This course will be intensive and comprehensive, with the ultimate aim of helping poets make deep progress on their projects.

    Our group will meet once a month for three hours in person and participate in virtual correspondence with classmates between meetings. This workshop includes:
    • Opportunities for feedback from, and brainstorming along with, the instructor and other participants 
    • Assigned readings and in-class discussions of many different types of poetry, with an eye on studying craft and poetry schools/lineages, so we can understand our own context as poets
    • Professional feedback from the instructor 
    • Robust online correspondence with other participants and the instructor between meetings
    • Deadlines 
    • In-class and at-home writing exercises and exploratory prompts
    • Support in goal-setting
    • A vibrant and supportive writing community 
    • Discussions on the basics of publishing in the poetry world
    • Two one-on-one meetings with the instructor to discuss the manuscript in progress in depth

    Application for 2020 Poetry Manuscript Group

    Max file size: 20MB

    Thank you for your interest in PVWW's manuscript groups! We look forward to reviewing your application and will be in touch by late fall 2019!

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What People Are Saying About PVWW

"Can't say enough about PVWW, Joy, and her amazing team of teachers! Writing is very much about the ability to sit in your seat for hours and put pen to paper, but coming to PVWW has helped me build a community around my writing, breathe new life into my efforts, and get out of my own head a bit. And beyond that, I've learned lots of practical, nuts-and-bolts techniques that have vastly improved my work."
- Emily Everett, Editor at The Common

Contact Us

Email: joy@pioneervalleywriters.org
Phone: 518-645-1113 
Location: Williamsburg, MA

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