As readers we sometimes assume the “I” in a poem is the same as the poet’s me. The lyric poet may promote this illusion of spontaneous utterance and unmediated feeling. But the poet who believes the speaker in a poem is “me” may also be suffering an illusion that will mire the poem in mediocrity. How then do we reconcile the seeming contradictory demands of sincerity and craft? And how might the self be most evident in poems that foreground pretense and masquerade?

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Participants will employ strategies for effortlessly generating new poems and revising older work, always with the intent of surprising themselves. Drawing from both avant-garde and epiphanic practices, students will be encouraged to break free of their usual processes in order to write the poems they never knew they wanted to write.

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Doors open at 1:30pm for this program

This information-packed lecture by legendary Coffee House Press founder and publisher Allan Kornblum provides poets with practical guidance about preparing and submitting a poetry manuscript. Drawing on his years of experience working with contemporary poets, Kornblum offers valuable insights that any emerging poet needs to hear.

Allan Kornblum, legendary founder and publisher of both Coffee House Press and Toothpaste Press, examines the history of poetry publishing from the clay tablet to digital imprints. Informed by his 40-year career in publishing, Kornblum explores the ways in which book-making shapes culture and imagines the future of literary publishing and independent presses.

Kendra Sullivan, Dylan Gauthier and friends of the boat-building collaborative Mare Liberum lead a workshop on how to sing shanties like a sailor, write poetry like a pirate, and build model boats like a shipwright learning the trade.

Help! Wendy Windstorm has terrible sneezes! Grumpy Harry’s poems blew away with her breezes! Wendy needs your super smarts to conquer alliteration, simile and more in this puppet adventure straight from Urban Stages.

Performed by Liz Parker and Rachel Sullivan

Mystical beasts, magical forests, lost treasure and more can be found in this island-making workshop. Children will create maps and poetic descriptions of distant unexplored islands for those daring enough to venture there.

Led by Poets House’s own Michael Romanos.

In celebration of Valentine’s Day, Poets House presents Albert Lamorisse’s timeless children’s film classic The Red Balloon. Afterward, children will make their own floating valentines in the form of hot-air balloon mobiles. This is an annual Poets House Children’s Room happening.

In celebration of the centenary of May Swenson’s birth, this reading will showcase the breadth of her poetic output, from nature poems displaying her keen observation of wildlife to exuberant and erotic love poems celebrating beauty and passion, to place poems recording her travels to the American southwest, France and Italy and her residence in New York.