The Simplest Things Last: Learning to Write Small

Through language, we let the world know we’re living; we stand up and say how we’re alive. As Charles Olsen notes in his poem Maximus, to himself, we speak “…with the sea / stretching out / from [our] feet.” By acknowledging the small, we gain vast creative strength.

During our time together, the primary goal is simple: To create without expectation, to acknowledge that a beautiful failure is better than a mediocre success. We’ll set out to discover how your writing temperament and current practices can be expanded to enlarge your poetic sensibilities. Through calculated, creative risk-taking, we’ll learn through unique poetry exercises, cross-genre experimentation, and engaging poetry in translation, as well as reading obscure work by celebrated poets and underappreciated work by lesser-known poets.

Tailored to your skill and comfort level, we’ll learn about elements of craft, (like line, sound, and form) and technique (methods of creating new work and revision) and take a look at how small, seemingly insignificant shifts in making poems are—in fact—expansive, sweeping, and significant approaches to changing our art, our lives, and the world around us.

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Dave Harrity travels the United States teaching workshops on contemplative living, imagination and poetry. His work has appeared in Verse Daily, Memorious, Revolver, Killing the Buddha, The Los Angeles Review, Copper Nickel, Confrontation, Softblow and elsewhere. He is the author of the craft manual Making Manifest (2013) as well as two books of poetry, These Intricacies (Cascade Books, 2015) and Our Father in the Year of the Wolf (Word Farm, 2016). An assistant professor of English at Campbellsville University, the recipient of an Emerging Artist Award from the Kentucky Arts Council, and a William Alexander II and Lisa Percy Fellowship recipient from the Rivendell Writers’ Colony, he lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife and children. Reach out via daveharrity.net.