Why just write poems when you can write better ones? This course is built on the notion that the most exciting writing begins after the first draft. It is specifically for folks who believe that writing poems just to express oneself is like using the Internet just for email. After all, poetry can change the way you and your readers think of the world and its inhabitants; it can break new ground for language; turn a blank sheet of paper into a teeming concert of voices and music.
Offered By
Sharpened Visions: A Poetry Workshop
California Institute of the ArtsAbout this Course
Skills you will gain
- Music
- Poetry Writing
- Art
- Creativity
Offered by

California Institute of the Arts
CalArts has earned an international reputation as the leading college of the visual and performing arts in the United States. Offering rigorous undergraduate and graduate degree programs through six schools—Art, Critical Studies, Dance, Film/Video, Music, and Theater—CalArts has championed creative excellence, critical reflection, and the development of new forms and expressions.
Syllabus - What you will learn from this course
Introduction and the Poetic Line
Poetry orchestrates its music, arguments, tensions, and environment via arrangements of language into lines and stanzas. This week we’ll address the importance of the line break, perhaps the most conspicuous, signature tool in the poet’s toolkit. Do you break more for sound, for sense, visual effect, shape, a mix of several? We’ll participate in several line break exercises and remix found poems. Also: prepare for your first quiz and a fun first writing prompt.
Abstraction and Image
Abstraction doesn’t mean “deep,” and image doesn’t mean “picture.” Images are typically understood as anything you can literally touch/taste/see/hear/smell, and abstractions are those things for which we have symbols (a clock for “time,” a heart for “love”) but no image. Abstractions and images may fill our poems, but how can you tell what’s what, and how can you leverage them to compelling ends? This week we’ll work at finding new symbols to replace clichéd ones for abstractions and we’ll work at crafting images that do more than add furniture to a poem, but create systems of relationships, moods, and even style.
Metaphor and Other Formulas of Difference
Most of us think of simile and metaphor, personification and other similar figures of speech as being about similarities between objects, concepts, and entities. But the juice in these formulas comes from how different the two things being compared seem to be. This is why writing: “the shark moved like a fish” is, alone, a lot less interesting than saying “the shark moved like a squad car.” We’ll talk about how playing with difference via juxtaposition can create a range of poetic effects. Then you’ll write a poem built of one robustly developed or several contrasting juxtapositions.
Rhyme
This week we’ll explore how rhyme leverages patterns of sameness and how we can estrange similarity for compelling poetic effects. We’ll check out examples of “rhyme”—sonic, visual, conceptual—from outside of poetry too.
Reviews
- 5 stars81.98%
- 4 stars14.65%
- 3 stars1.98%
- 2 stars0.59%
- 1 star0.79%
TOP REVIEWS FROM SHARPENED VISIONS: A POETRY WORKSHOP
I have learned so much and I love D's energy and the avid participation of the other students. Will definitely pass on what I've learned. Can't wait for more courses like this in the future! :)
This course provides brilliant explanations delivered in an extremely entertaining manner and incredible prompts that make the process of writing poetry extremely amusing. I recommend it 100%.
I learned a lot from this workshop. It's very straightforward and easy to learn and I produced better poems that are far more better from the poems that I've written for the past 3 years.
I appreciate the practicality of assignments and delivery of concepts for writing poetry. I learned some skills and it gave me structure. The conversation between students is less accessible.
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