BASIC CONFERENCE ATTENDANCE: TUE-FRI
Cost $675
Includes panels & evening readings, lunch (Wed/Thur) & dinner (Tue/Wed/Thur), banquet & receptions only.
BASIC CONFERENCE ATTENDANCE + workshop package registration: TUE-FRI
COST $975
Includes panels & evening readings, lunch (Wed/Thur) & dinner (Tue/Wed/Thur), banquet & receptions, PLUS any 3 workshop sessions (1 x two-day + 1 x one-day workshop, or 3 x one-day workshop bundle).
CONFERENCE DAY FEES ALONE (NO WORKSHOP)
TUE, $225; WED, $275; THUR, $265; FRI, $195
Includes panels & evening readings, lunch (Wed/Thur), dinner/banquet (Tue/Wed/Thur), reception, lunch on Wed/Thur ON SELECTED DAYS ONLY.
Additional workshops can be included with any Conference package at additional charge. Overnight accommodations are charged separately.
TWO-DAY WORKSHOPS/SEMINARS: WED/THUR AND THUR/FRI
—Chad Abushanab, MELISSA BALMAIN, David Groff, Allison Joseph, DAVID M. KATZ, Joshua Mehigan
One-Day Workshops: TUE , WED, THUR, AND FRI
—Dustin Brookshire, NICOLE CARUSO GARCIA, Matt Miller, Clare Rossini,
PERSONAL POETRY CONSULTATION
COST $50 FOR 30 MINUTES
—ANNA M. EVANS
Two-Day Workshops/Seminars (Wed/Thur p.m.)
Tell, Don’t (Just) Show: Writing Poems of Insight, Wisdom, and Repair
with David Groff
As writers, we’ve always been told to “show, don’t tell”—to rely on imagery, simile, metaphor, and associative language to convey the ineffable, unparaphrasable, and yet precise truth of our poems. But of course all kinds of poets do all sorts of telling all the time. In this workshop, we’ll write poems that convey the truths we’ve learned about the world, expressed forthrightly, beautifully, and resonantly.
As we make poems that arise out of our hard-won experience, insights, and wisdom, we are summoned to discovery and surprise, while employing our skills with language, imagery, rhetoric, and syntax. We’ll create poems that don’t just probe a problem or feature a fracture but instead offer our readers reconciliation, the promise of repair, and maybe even revelation.
David Groff’s most recent book, Live in Suspense, was published by Trio House Press. His previous book Clay, also from Trio House, was chosen by Michael Waters for the Louise Bogan Award. His first collection, Theory of Devolution, was selected by Mark Doty for the National Poetry Series. He is the coeditor of Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS (Alyson) and Who’s Yer Daddy?: Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners (University of Wisconsin Press). An independent book editor, he teaches poetry, nonfiction, and publishing in the MFA creative writing program at the City College of New York. www.davidgroff.com
MASTER POETS CRITICAL SEMINAR: DENISE LEVERTOV AND THE MUSIC OF RISK
with David M. Katz
What would it be like to write a poem without any preconceived idea of what the poem should be? What might happen if you simply proceeded syllable by syllable, sound by sound, and line by line, guided only by your ear, your mind, and your perceptions? If you were Denise Levertov, the result would be a poetry of extraordinary immediacy, intimacy, and musicality. Pursuing Levertov’s approach, however, requires the courage to risk writing verse without the usual guardrails. Participants in the seminar will have the pleasure of diving deeply into the work of a major American poet, perhaps finding new ways of writing their own poetry.
In preparation for the seminar, participants will independently study Levertov’s poetry. During the two-day seminar, they will each be asked to make a brief presentation to other seminar participants on a Levertov poem of their choice. On Friday, seminar participants will constitute a panel at which they will jointly present their findings on Levertov to the wider Conference. For more information or to contact the seminar leader, email poetryby_thesea@yahoo.com with the subject line “Seminar.”
David M. Katz is the author of five books of poetry—The Biographer, In Praise of Manhattan, Stanzas on Oz, and Claims of Home, all published by Dos Madres Press, and The Warrior in the Forest (House of Keys). Poems of his either have appeared or will appear in Poetry, Birmingham Poetry Review, The Hudson Review, THINK, Nimrod, and The Sonneteer. He is a co-host of the Morningside Poetry Series in Manhattan and posts frequently on his website, The David M. Katz Poetry Blog. In 2024, he starred in Gully’s Paradise, a film by Shalom Gorewitz.
spare but powerful
with Joshua Mehigan
Some of the profoundest aesthetic experiences come from a collapse of overwhelming complexity into one composed and irreducible expression, like e=mc2. This mysterious distillation is at the heart of poetry—a world of complex circumstances, emotions, and ideas, bundled cleanly (and not too cleanly) into a minimal juxtaposition of images, phrases, or lines, or into a single metaphor. Its effect is proverbially magical. It’s not magic.
Spare but Powerful is a two-day poetry workshop in which we’ll invesitage how poets from Caedmon on have achieved radical economy in lyric poems. Discussion will focus on strategies and tricks (yes, “tricks”!) of imaginative, verbal, rhetorical, and various types of more strictly poetic compression. We will discuss student poems alongside a selection of model texts, each shorter than a typical sonnet (<90 words) but evocative, uncanny, and often mindblowing. Examples include: “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers” (Dickinson; 76 words), “Reapers” (Toomer; 65 words), “Full fathom five” (Shakespeare; 50 words), “The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till” (Brooks; 37 words), Tanka 4: “Under the moonlight”/“Bajo la luna” (Borges; 22 words), Haiku 21: “On winter mornings” (Wright; 13 words), and “Fortune doth frown” (Wyatt?; 10 words). A packet will be provided.
Joshua Mehigan lives in Brookyln, New York. He has received fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. His second book, Accepting the Disaster (FSG, 2014) was cited in the New York Times Book Review and TLS as a best book of the year. His poems have appeared in periodicals including The New Yorker and Poetry and are recent or forthcoming in Image, Narrative, and The New Republic. He has recently finished his third book of poems.
Two-Day Workshops/Seminars (Thur/Fri p.m.)
The Art of Losing: An Elegy Workshop
WITH CHAD ABUSHANAB
The art of losing—as Elizabeth Bishop tells us—may not be hard to master. Anyone who’s tried to translate such losses into poems, however, knows that the journey from cessation to work of art requires some thoughtful and often challenging maneuvers.
In this two-day workshop, we’ll take a deep dive into the elegy genre, encountering a diverse array of examples both classic and contemporary along the way. We’ll widen our understanding of how elegies unfold and process ideas of loss into poetry, opening an entire spectrum of approaches for writing about the people and things now gone from our lives—ranging from miraculous immortalization to studied objectivity.
Attendees are encouraged to submit their own elegies in advance of the conference to be workshopped on-site.
Chad Abushanab is the author of The Last Visit, which won the 2018 Donald Justice Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Sewanee Review, Ecotone, The Believer, Best New Poets, Southern Poetry Review, and many other publications. He is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing in the MFA program at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Read more at www.chadabushanab.com.
Getting Your Butt in the Chair
with Melissa Balmain
Do you long to be more productive? This workshop will help you overcome “lack of inspiration,” “lack of discipline,” and all the other lacks that stop us from writing poems. We’ll explore field-tested methods such as tweaking your work habits to fit your life and personality, mining ideas from the news and a wide range of other sources, and using a number of effective prompts. We’ll reinforce all the above with exercises and a handy (and entertaining) reading packet. By the end of our time together, you should be well on your way to a fruitful summer.
Melissa Balmain edits Light, North America’s longest-running journal of comic verse, and has taught writing seminars for 15 years at the University of Rochester. Her poems and prose have appeared in The American Bystander, Crab Orchard Review, Ecotone, The Hopkins Review, Literary Matters, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Nimrod, Poetry Daily, and Rattle. Her latest poetry collection is Satan Talks to His Therapist (Paul Dry Books). Her favorite anecdote about getting one’s butt in the chair involves a famous writer, leisure wear, and light bondage. Details available by the sea.
Forming the Blues: How Traditional Forms Can Be Transformed by the Blues
with Allison Joseph
What does it mean to sing the blues in sonnet form? This workshop will bring a blues perspective to traditional forms. We’ll talk about the blues sonnet and the blues villanelle, and will also discuss using the traditional blues rhyme scheme in contemporary poems. We’ll discuss newer invented forms that incorporate blues feeling, such as the bop and the golden shovel. No knowledge of blues music is necessary to participate in this workshop, though the workshop will incorporate musical works as well as poetic works. Inspirations this workshop will honor include musicians Robert Johnson, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and Shemekia Copeland as well as poets Henry Dumas, Langston Hughes, Kevin Young, Tim Seibles, Kim Addonizio, and Sherley Anne Williams.
Allison Joseph works, lives, and writes in Carbondale, IL, where she is Professor of English and Director of the MFA Program at SIU Carbondale. She serves as editor of the long running literary journal Crab Orchard Review. Her two latest books of poems are Blue Streak (Glass Lyre Press) and Dwelling (Red Hen Press). She is also the author of Lexicon (Red Hen Press) and Confessions of a Barefaced Woman, which was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award in Poetry. She is the widow of the dearly missed poet and editor Jon Tribble.
One-Day Workshops
Let Me Say This: Building an Anthology—A Generative Workshop (Tue PM)
WITH Dustin Brookshire
Anthologies are more than simple collections. A great anthology – from the mainstay Norton Anthology of Poetry to Jarman & Mason’s Rebel Angels to Howe and Bass’s revolutionary No More Masks! – can become a cultural event that introduces readers to new voices and gives insight into the zeitgeist. This one-day workshop is for editors of anthologies as well as for poets submitting work to them. We will discuss anthology strategy from concept to publication and also generate our own new poems. Using the recently published Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology, we will explore ways to support a smooth and successful anthology publication process. Participants are encouraged to bring questions for a Q&A. (Participants can also email questions anonymously beforehand. Emailed questions will be answered in the workshop without the submitter being identified.) We will then transition into generating new work by exploring the discography and cultural impact of Dolly Parton while using her songs as inspiration for writing new poems via thematic prompts.
Dustin Brookshire’s (he/him) debut poetry full-length collection, For All Of Us Faggots, is forthcoming from Iron Oaks Editions in March 2027. He is the author of five chapbooks: Repeat As Needed (Harbor Editions, 2025), Never Picked First For Playtime (Harbor Editions, 2023), Love Most Of You Too (Harbor Editions, 2021), To The One Who Raped Me (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012), and Contoured (forthcoming from Lily Poetry), a collection of collaborative contoured villanelles written with Denise Duhamel, Beth Gylys, Kerry Trautman, and Donna Vorreyer. Dustin is co-editor of the Nautilus Silver Medal award-winning Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing, 2023), which was also named to the 2024 “Books All Georgians Should Read” list by Georgia Center for the Book. Editor of the Lambda Literary Award finalist anthology When I Was Straight: A Tribute to Maureen Seaton (Harbor Editions, 2024), which received a Kirkus Reviews rating of “Get it!,” Dustin’s poems have been featured on NPR and other radio stations, been featured in Georgia Poetry in the Park, and been published by Pleiades, Five Points, South Carolina Review, Verse Daily, Best American Poetry Blog, Chiron Review, and The Westchester Review, among many others. The 2024 Jon Tribble Editors Fellow, Dustin curates the Wild & Precious Life Series and volunteers for Punch Bucket Lit and Small Harbor Publishing. For more, visit dustinbrookshire.com.
Own the Room: Performance Skills for the Generous Reader (WED AM)
WITH Nicole Caruso Garcia
Discover how to bring your poems fully alive in the room and engage your audience. This workshop focuses on the core elements of dynamic delivery—vocal choices, pacing, and body language—so you can read with clarity, presence, and emotional resonance.
We’ll also cover the practical side of presenting your work: shaping an engaging set, keeping time with ease, navigating reading etiquette, and showing up with confidence (even when nerves are buzzing). Open to readers of all experience levels, this session offers adaptable tools you can use whether you’re preparing for your first open mic or refining a well-seasoned practice.
Please bring a poem you’d like to mark up and experiment with.
Nicole Caruso Garcia’s full-length debut OXBLOOD (Able Muse Press) received the International Book Award for narrative poetry. Her work appears in Crab Orchard Review, Light, Mezzo Cammin, ONE ART, Plume, Rattle, RHINO, and elsewhere. Her poetry has received the Willow Review Award and won a 2021 Best New Poets honor. She is an associate poetry editor at Able Muse and served as an executive Board member at Poetry by the Sea. Visit her at nicolecarusogarcia.com.
Haunting & the Haunted: Finding & Honing the poetry of Place (Fri a.m.)
with Matt W. Miller
How do we use image, language, form, and sound to set down our towns, our neighborhoods, and the cities we live in such a way that words capture the truth of a place? How do we resist sentimentality while perhaps welcoming a place’s own particular mythology? Tyler Malone has written, “The city resists being seen as pure architecture or pure activity. We mistake the city if we take it for mere setting or plot. The city is character; it breathes its own life, speaks in its own tongue, moves to its own rhythms.” In this workshop we will write, workshop, and revise poems that attempt to find the breath, the language, the music, and the character of the places that make us, that break us, that create us through our own survival. We will consider how place impacts form and how form may shape how we see a place. We will also look at work by poets who are steeped in place such as Richard Hugo, Major Jackson, Natasha Trethaway, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Alberto Rios and explore the ways in and out of the places that haunt us and in which we, as poets, haunt.
A recent winner of Narratively Magazine’s Memoir Prize, Matt W Miller is the author of Tender the River (Texas Review Press), winner of the Independent Publishers of New England Book Award, finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award, the Eric Hoffer Provocateur Award, and a finalist for the Jacar Press Julie Suk Award. the New Hampshire Poetry Society Book Award, and the Poetry by the Sea Book Award. Other books include the The Wounded for the Water (Salmon Poetry), Club Icarus (University of North Texas Press), selected by Major Jackson as the 2012 Vassar Miller Poetry Prize winner, and Cameo Diner: Poems (Loom Press). He has published work previously in Narrative, Rhino Poetry, Harvard Review, Notre Dame Review, Southwest Review, Florida Review, Third Coast, Adroit Journal, and Poetry Daily, among other journals and was a winner, Nimrod International’s Pablo Neruda Prize, the Poetry by The Sea Sonnet Sequence Contest, the River Styx Micro-fiction Prize, the Iron Horse Review’s Trifecta Poetry Prize. The recipient of fellowships from Stanford University, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Miller’s first collection of essays, entitled The Build, will be published ion 2028. He lives with his family in coastal New Hampshire.
RETHINKING YOUR WRITING PROCESS: WRITING VISCERAL POETRY (Thur AM)
WITH CLARE ROSSINI
In a letter written in 1924, Hart Crane wrote, “I try to make my poems experiences, I rather don’t try, when they are good they are.” I think we all know what Crane means: the best poems seem to go beyond recording or describing experience. Instead, the poems themselves are experiences, their form, voice, language, or imagery so alive that when reading them, we lose ourselves in the poem’s words and music. We may describe such poems as Emily Dickinson did, who said, “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” Emily Dickinson here describes a poem whose effect on the reader is not just aesthetic or intellectual but physical. Visceral.
In this workshop, we’ll explore what seem to be the essential aspects of visceral poetry—using plenty of examples along the way—and will suggest strategies for re-thinking your writing process to harness that power in our work. Come ready to have the top of your head taken off.
Clare Rossini’s poems and essays have appeared widely in journals and anthologies, including The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, Poetry, and The Best American Poetry series, where her poems have appeared twice, most recently in 2020. Clare has published three books; the first, Winter Morning with Crow, won the Akron Poetry Prize. She recently co-edited an anthology titled The Poetry of Capital (U of Wisconsin, 2020). She’s received grants and awards from a variety of organizations, including the State of Connecticut, the Minnesota Arts Board, the Bush Foundation, and the Maxwell Shepherd Foundation; she’s been awarded residencies at MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the American Academy in Rome. After teaching at the college level for over forty years—including twenty-three years at Trinity—Clare recently retired. She continues to teach at conferences and is laying plans for an environmental organization involving poets and poetry. In 2025, she was named Poet Laureate of West Hartford, CT.
30-Minute Personal Consultation
With Anna M. Evans
Have you always wanted to write in meter, but find that its rhythms and subtleties elude you? Or, do you have a poem or poem project which you can’t quite get RIGHT? Have no fear, Anna M. Evans is here to help. Her undergraduate-tested method of “teaching” meter will have you effortlessly creating iambic pentameter in no time. And she never met a line she couldn’t fix (← that’s iambic pentameter right there, admittedly with a first foot anapest). Sign up for a 30-minute tutorial, and Anna will email you to arrange a time convenient to meet with you at the conference.
Anna M. Evans’ poems have appeared in the Harvard Review, Atlanta Review, Rattle, American Arts Quarterly, and 32 Poems. She gained her MFA from Bennington College. Recipient of Fellowships from the MacDowell Artists’ Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and winner of the 2012 Rattle Poetry Prize Readers’ Choice Award, she currently teaches at West Windsor Art Center and Rowan College at Burlington County. Her collections are: Sisters & Courtesans (White Violet Press), Under Dark Waters: Surviving the Titanic (Able Muse Press), and States of Grace, forthcoming from Able Muse Press. Visit her online at annamevans.com.
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