From Oral Stories to Written Poems

Empathy, entering into the lives of others, to better understand their humanity (complicated as it often is) and to expand our own sensibilities, is a why so many of us write. In this class, participants will draw from the tales and anecdotes of others as prompts into poems. Stories passed down from family, stories from friends, co-workers, second and third-hand stories, stories from strangers we may never hear from again, stories from dreams, from characters part or wholly imagined, stories from others that interweave with our own. Of course, stories are the stuff of fiction and non-fiction, but they are also provide inspiration for poets. How can the story be best shaped into a poem? In this generative class, we'll look at models of story-inspired poems (by William Carlos Williams, Lucille Clifton, Langston Hughes, Naomi Shihab Nye, James Wright, and others) to explore poetic techniques, such as capturing a 'character's' voice, visual texture (setting), what to include, what to leave out, with the goal of --as the stories inspired you-- inspiring others (starting with class participants).