Ann Quinn
Upcoming Classes and Readings
First Saturday of each month, 10-12 pm EST
offered by Yellow Arrow Publishing, supporting women writers worldwide
currently on Zoom--join from anywhere!
Very limited openings--please contact me if you would like to take part.
Topical Poetry
8 Mondays, 1-3
Sept. 27-Dec. 15
offered independently, class limit 10, $280
Keep the wellspring of inspiration flowing this fall. Each week will focus on poems about a new topic: we’ll write of memory, of presence, of grief, of protest, and of art, among other things. Our teachers will be great poems, our content will be our own. Each class will include discussion of inspiring poems, guided free-writes, and sharing. Between classes you will have reading and journal assignments. You will come away with an extensive portfolio of poems and ideas for poems. Contact me via the form below if you have questions.
If you’ve taken Topical Poetry with me before, we will be looking at mostly new poems and new topics. We will include one formal workshop in this session.
About me: I came to poetry suddenly, specifically, at age 46 (and now I'm 56). Of course everything was leading to it—my decades studying music, my lifetime of voracious reading, along with my pursuit of consciousness through meditation and yoga—it all snapped into place. Within seven years of beginning, I had my MFA and a book and had begun teaching adults, children and teens the craft of writing.
There is nothing like the feeling of a poem being born into the world through your own hands, but as satisfying for me is the joy of seeing a poem come to the world through one of my student’s hands. The world comes a little more clearly into focus the more we look at it together through the lens of poetry. I hope that you will join me in this venture.
Ma
In Japan, Ma is the essential space of nothingness—the empty, the void.
I’ve been thinking about the in-between
places lately like the space between
words and the silence between notes
the summer between school years
the nights between days and how
essential the in-betweens are and what
I’m wondering is if death is the in-between
space or if life is
6 Thursdays, 10-12:30
Sept. 23-Oct. 28
offered through the Writer’s Center (for other classes taught be me and others, click on the link)
Writing poems is discovery on paper, and good poems surprise and delight the poet as much as anyone. In this workshop you will try on a variety of styles and forms on the way to finding your own poetic voice. We will read poems together and use them as starting points for your own work, both in and out of class. The goal is for you to come away from the class with a portfolio of favorite poems--poems discovered in reading, discovered in writing. Note for beginners: You are so welcome here, but prepare to cast aside your inner critic and write a lot! Required text: A Poetry Handbook, by Mary Oliver
This might be considered a back-to-basics class, appropriate for any level, using Mary Oliver’s book as a jumping off point for exploration and discussion. The class includes one workshop session, and lots of chances to write and share.