Reclaiming the Prose Poem: An Introduction

• Saturday, April 15, 2023

• 10:00 AM 3:00 PM

• Online

A Poetry Workshop

ALL LEVELS

As poet Charles Bernstein once said, prose poems are often looked at with suspicion not only by the usual haters of poetry, but also by many poets themselves. And yet they contain so much possibility for expansion, for fun, and for subversion. This workshop will serve as a gateway into the joyously liminal form of the prose poem. We will look at a wide variety of prose poems across history including works by Charles Baudelaire, Russell Edson, Miho Nonaka, and Mary Ruefle. We will also write our own prose poems in a supportive environment. In so doing, we will make ourselves suspicious! Poets and prose writers of all levels welcome – prepare yourself to swim into the murky yet invigorating waters of the hybrid genre.

Jefferson Navicky is the author of four books, most recently the novel-in-prose-poems, Head of Island Beautification for the Rural Outlands (2023), as well as Antique Densities: Modern Parables & Other Experiments in Short Prose (2021), which won the 2022 Maine Literary Book Award for Poetry. Jefferson works as the archivist for the Maine Women Writers Collection