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PJ Seminar: Putting the Poem to Bed: A Master Class on Endings, Closure, and Leaving the Door Open in Poems with Gabrielle Calvocoressi

$70.00 · July 26

In this class we’ll look at the way poems are able to achieve fulfilling closure and endings in ways that amplify the possibility of ongoingness and surprise.

Start Date

July 26

Day(s) of the Week

Wednesday

Class Times

7:00pm – 9:00pm CT

Location

Zoom (online)

Sessions

1

Instructor

Price

$70

In stock

Description

Achieving closure is hard to do in life and equally difficult in poems. In this class we’ll look at the way poems are able to achieve fulfilling closure and endings in ways that amplify the possibility of ongoingness and surprise. We’ll discuss where endings actually start in a poem and what do we mean by “closure” and “ending” at all?
How do we put a poem or any experience to bed? And how can a fulfilling ending keep us open to dreaming about the future? We’ll read some poems together and do some generative work. While we’ll focus on poems this class is open to writers and dreamers at all levels in all genres.

About Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of The Last Time I Saw Amelia EarhartApocalyptic Swing (a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize), and Rocket Fantastic, winner of the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. Calvocoressi is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including a Stegner Fellowship and Jones Lectureship from Stanford University; a Rona Jaffe Woman Writer's Award; a Lannan Foundation residency in  Marfa, TX; the Bernard F. Conners Prize from The Paris Review; and a residency from the Civitella di Ranieri Foundation, among others. Calvocoressi's poems have been published or are forthcoming in numerous magazines and journals including The Baffler, The New York TimesPOETRYBoston ReviewKenyon ReviewTin House, and The New Yorker. Calvocoressi is an Editor at Large at Los Angeles Review of Books, and Poetry Editor at Southern Cultures. Works in progress include a non-fiction book entitled, The Year I Didn't Kill Myself and a novel, The Alderman of the Graveyard. Calvocoressi teaches at UNC Chapel Hill and lives in Old East Durham, NC, where joy, compassion, and social justice are at the center of their personal and poetic practice.  Calvocoressi is the Beatrice Shepherd Blane Fellow at the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute for 2022 - 2023.