THE END, RIGHT? RIGHT!

A RECORDED COURSE:
—one craft class
—a recorded Q&A one bonus class
—a document of model poems

There are countless ways to end poems, and yet the great majority of endings do one of two things: greatly contract the focus of the poem, or expand it wider than any first time reader could anticipate. By taking a close look at some poems we’ll discover how the use of imagery, line-breaks, quotes, leaps, surprises and other “tricks” lead to their satisfactory conclusions.

Tuition: $40 (click here to purchase)
**After payment, we’ll send you a link and password for the videos and documents (if, after two days, you haven’t received a message from us , please email us at sunjuneliterary@gmail.com).

Instructor: Laure-Anne Bosselaar, former Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara, is the author of These Many Rooms, published by Four Way Books in 2019, The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, Small Gods of Grief, winner of the Isabella Gardner Prize for Poetry for 2001, and of  A New Hunger – an ALA Notable Book. Her poetry was featured on Poetry Daily, The Academy of American Poets’ “Poem-a-Day” website, and in reviews such as Orion, Georgia Review, Ploughshares and Harvard Review.  Garrison Keillor read four of her poems on NPR’s “A Writer’s Almanac.”  A Pushcart Prize recipient, and the editor of four anthologies, she taught at Emerson College,  Sarah Lawrence College, and UCSB.  Laure-Anne is available for poetry mentorship services — guiding the poet through individual, in depth poem critiques and revision suggestions. She also offers editing services for chapbook and book-length collections.

WAIT, WAIT!  LET ME REPHRASE THIS.

A RECORDED COURSE:
—three craft classes
—one bonus class to answer lingering questions and describe how you might create a workshop of your own using what you’ve learned
—poems & craft documents

The focus of this workshop is on revision: how can we acquire the tools we need to revise our poems on our own? Many poets find it challenging to revise their work without the help of a poetry group, workshop or mentor. Participants will learn how to strengthen and hone their revision skills which will — systematically and in depth — address all the elements of craft in a poem. Title, form, syntax, tone, metaphor, imagery, line-breaks, assonantal and alliterative movements, punctuation, & more.

Fee: $75 (click here to purchase)
**After payment, we’ll send you a link and password for the videos and documents (if, after two days, you haven’t received a message from us , please email us at sunjuneliterary@gmail.com).

THE END, RIGHT? RIGHT!
March 27, 2023

There are countless ways to end poems, and yet the great majority of endings do one of two things: greatly contract the focus of the poem, or expand it wider than any first time reader could anticipate. By taking a close look at some poems we’ll discover how the use of imagery, line-breaks, quotes, leaps, surprises and other “tricks” lead to their satisfactory conclusions.

Tuition: $50

Instructor: Laure-Anne Bosselaar, former Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara, is the author of These Many Rooms, published by Four Way Books in 2019, The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, Small Gods of Grief, winner of the Isabella Gardner Prize for Poetry for 2001, and of  A New Hunger – an ALA Notable Book. Her poetry was featured on Poetry Daily, The Academy of American Poets’ “Poem-a-Day” website, and in reviews such as Orion, Georgia Review, Ploughshares and Harvard Review.  Garrison Keillor read four of her poems on NPR’s “A Writer’s Almanac.”  A Pushcart Prize recipient, and the editor of four anthologies, she taught at Emerson College,  Sarah Lawrence College, and UCSB.  Laure-Anne is available for poetry mentorship services — guiding the poet through individual, in depth poem critiques and revision suggestions. She also offers editing services for chapbook and book-length collections.

WAIT, WAIT!  LET ME REPHRASE THIS.
September 13-October 4, 2021; August 1-15, 2022
The focus of this live online workshop will be on revision: how can we acquire the tools we need to revise our poems on our own? Many poets find it challenging to revise their work without the help of a poetry group, workshop or mentor. Participants will learn how to strengthen and hone their revision skills which will — systematically and in depth — address all the elements of craft in a poem. Title, form, syntax, tone, metaphor, imagery, line-breaks, assonantal and alliterative movements, punctuation, & more. After each 1 hour class, we’ll have an open discussion for ½ hour.

Class Dates:  Four Mondays, 7-8:30pm EST: September 13, 20, 27 and October 4.

Class Size: Capped at 14 participants.

Tuition: $400, with two need-based sliding-scale spots available.

ECOLOGY OF THE SPIRIT: A Retreat with Poets Nickole Brown & Jessica Jacobs
November 4-6, 2022 CANCELLED DUE TO COVID
In a time of great anxiety and unrest, how can we foster a literacy of the forest to learn from its long-evolved wisdom? What can root systems teach us about reciprocity through networks? In a culture designed to keep us distracted and always wanting to have and do more, how can we strengthen ourselves to pay attention and be present? How can we listen to leaves speaking in gestures and sounds we often can’t understand or know how to hear? How can trees, a symbol of the sacred in so many traditions, help us find the sacred within ourselves and in the larger world? What words can we find to save what’s left of our green spaces, much less our place among them?

This three-day retreat, open to writers of any level of experience, will seek answers to these questions and more. Turning to the 434 acres of the Arboretum as a safe haven, teacher, and companion, poets Nickole Brown and Jessica Jacobs will gather together to share work that will deepen our awareness of both non-human life and the spirit residing inside all of us, together. We’ll discuss poems and essays, try our hand at generative exercises, and also venture out under the canopy to find our own words that might restore us, might help us bridge the divides within ourselves in order to bridge the divide between our kingdom and theirs. 

Class Dates:  Three Sessions:

• Reading & Conversation – Friday, November 4, 5 – 6:30 p.m.
• Generative Retreat – Saturday, November 5 , 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
• Generative Retreat – Sunday, November 6 , 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

Tuition: $325. (Arboretum member receive 10% discount. Scholarship support is also available and can be inquired about at adulteducation@ncarboretum.org)

Register for the class here and find more information about hotels in the Asheville area.

Class Size: 20 students

Location: The North Carolina Arboretum

Instructors:
Nickole Brown received her MFA from the Vermont College, studied literature at Oxford University, and was the editorial assistant for the late Hunter S. Thompson. She worked at Sarabande Books for ten years. Her first collection, Sister, a novel-in-poems, was first published in 2007 by Red Hen Press and a new edition was reissued by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2018. Her second book, a biography-in-poems called Fanny Says, came out from BOA Editions in 2015, and the audio book of that collection became available in 2017. She was an Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock for four years until she gave up her beloved time in the classroom in hope of writing full time. Currently, she is the Editor for the Marie Alexander Poetry Series and teaches periodically at a number of places, including the Sewanee School of Letters MFA Program, the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNCA, and the Hindman Settlement School.

Jessica Jacobs is the author of Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going, a memoir-in-poems of love and marriage, winner of the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Poetry and one of Library Journal‘s Best Poetry Books of the Year, and Pelvis with Distance, a biography-in-poems of Georgia O’Keeffe, winner of the New Mexico Book Award and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. An avid long-distance runner, Jessica serves as Chapbook Editor for Beloit Poetry Journal and lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with her wife, the poet Nickole Brown, with whom she co-authored Write It!, a collection of writing prompts from Spruce Books, an imprint of Penguin/RandomHouse. She is the founder of Yetzirah, a literary organization for Jewish poets, and unalone, her collection of poems in conversation with the Book of Genesis, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2024.

Questions? Contact us at sunjuneliterary@gmail.com