“We must go in search of enchantment,” wrote painter René Magritte. In this three-session generative class, we’ll explore approaches to writing poems that cut through the ropes of narrative we so frequently carry, and embrace chant and en-chant-ment, the exaltations of night, and unusual shifts of perspective derived from a sense of displacement and the uncanny.

We’ll look at different approaches with an ear to discovering what aspects they mine to deliver these experiences. You’ll be given in-class prompts, as well as ones to work on outside of class, and there will be optional sharing.

By the end of the course, you’ll come away with techniques to help you rely more on intuition and association, where words and images converse anew with each other, and space opens to allow poems to gel. By letting go of more traditional ways of making sense, we’ll enter more deeply the spell of what the poet Paul Valéry called a “strange discourse… a language within a language.”

Embracing En-chant-ment in the Making of Poems | Led by Sarah Maclay (Fee Waiver)