10 Months: March - December, 2026 • Meets First Thursdays on Zoom (6-9 pm EDT) • $2,600

10-Month Poetry / Hybrid Worksho

with Amie Whittemore

This workshop is designed for poets and hybrid writers who have a manuscript in progress, plus those who have a vision but are just beginning. Poetry projects may be in a wide range of verse and poetry forms. Hybrid projects may be those that mix or experiment with forms. This may include mixed prose/poetry texts, experimental or poetry-based memoir or essay, mixed visual/language texts, and poetic or lyric essays which stretch the boundaries of traditional or popular prose-based creative nonfiction. ​In studying poetry and hybrid forms together, we'll see the vast and exciting overlaps between these terms, both in historical context and in practice. In addition to work on our own manuscripts, we'll read about and discuss traditions in lyric and narrative poetry, prose poetry, fixed and free verse, hybrid and cross-art, and more. Students can expect to read numerous monthly excerpts and five short books. Students’ goal for the end of the year will be a working first draft of either one or more chapbook-length (approx. 30 pages) or full-length (approx. 60-70 pages) manuscript (or a wide range of pages for uncategorizable or hybrid work.) For more details about what this course entails, including overall features of the program, see the above About the Program section​. ​Limited to 10 writers.

Course Outline & Topics Covered

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• MARCH: We’ll ask the big questions: What, why, where, and how is poetry and/or hybrid? What’s the nature of genre and form? What are lyricism and narrative?
   

• APRIL: We’ll build on our ideas by looking at prose poetry, plus an introduction to the lyric essay and proto-hybrid texts from long ago.
   

• MAY: We’ll study the nature of poetic or hybrid fragmentation on the page, what its purposes might be in regards to creating an “experiential” text, and what happens when form and content mirror one another. 
   

• JUNE: We’ll explore a bit of the history of poetry/hybrid/experimental writing as a sociopolitical statement, particularly sociopolitical concepts like non-binary identities or postcolonialism. 
   

• JULY: We’ll see free verse as a way to represent the mind’s natural flow of language on the page, plus continue lyric essay explorations.
   

• AUGUST: We’ll touch on the idea of the “anti-memoir” and experimental memoir, plus some mixed-media possibilities and contemporary epistolary forms.
   

• SEPTEMBER: We’ll see mixed media possibilities, such as visual-poetry texts, plus creative use of writing that’s not ours, like found poetry, black-outs, white-outs, and “creative plagiarism."
   

• OCTOBER: We’ll look further at using the stuff of real life to create a text. We’ll do some preliminary revision explorations, including how to “order” and organize a manuscript.
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• NOVEMBER: We’ll review and deepen core concepts from class, plus experiment with revision exercises, with attention to sharpening detail, word choice, and voice. 
   

• DECEMBER: We’ll do a basic overview of the practicalities and realities of publishing poetry and hybrid work, plus reflect on where we’ve been, where we’re at, and where we’d like to go.