Community Poetry Workshop with Ilya Kaminsky

As part of Poetry@Tech's Community Workshop initiative, join us for a unique generative poetry workshop with Ilya Kaminsky on 28 March 2021.

The workshop will begin with a discussion by Ilya of the works of our Spring featured poets, followed by a workshop session where Ilya will help the poets craft new poems.

This event is free and open to the public. However, due to space constraints, please RSVP for the event so we may save you a spot. Please request to attend the workshop by filling out this form. 

For more information and directions, you may contact Travis Denton, at travis.denton@lmc.gatech.edu .

Here's more about Ilya's primary topic of discussion:

Discussing Poetry@Tech's Spring '21 Poets & Generative Workshop

Our group will begin by chatting about poems by some of this semester's visiting Poetry@Tech authors. I will share poems by such poets as Natalie Diaz, Maggie Smith Valzhyna Mort, Arthur Sze and others. How are their poems made? what role do images, rhythm, repetition and other formal devices play? How do these poems' tonalities make them memorable? How did these poets learn from other poets in the tradition? How can we learn from their writing for our own new work? During our meeting, we will write some new poems in response to their writing.

About the Poet

Ilya Kaminsky is the Bourne Chair of Poetry at Georgia Tech. He is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press, 2019), which was a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry in 2019, and Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004).

Poet's Website  Poet's Bio

We'd like to thank Ilya for the wonderful and informative workshop, as well as our 60+ participants from around the world who attended the workshop.

We had attendees from the US, Russia, India, Belarus, Ukraine, Singapore, UK, New Zealand, and many other countries (at least 12, at last count) who made this workshop a tremendous success.

Maggie Smith:

• 'Good Bones'
• Maggie Smith, 'The Mother'
• Maggie Smith, 'Rain, New Year's Eve'

Arthur Sze:

• Tu Fu, 'Spring View' (Translated by Arthur Sze), from The Silk Dragon (Copper Canyon, 2001)
• from 'Before Completion' (section 4)
• 'The Aphrodesiac'

Ross Gay:

• from 'Opera Singer' (stanza 1)
• 'Ode to the Flute'
• 'Thank You'
• 'Alzheimer's'
• 'The Truth'
• 'To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian'

Valzhyna Mort:

• 'To Antigone, a Dispatch'
• 'New Year in Vishnyowka'

Danez Smith:

• from 'Summer, Somewhere'
• 'Little Prayer'
• 'my president'

Natalie Diaz:

• 'My Brother My Wound'
• 'Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation'

Kobayashi Issa, Haiku (translated by Robert Hass)