Poets House offers a wide range of classes for experienced readers and writers of poetry, as well as newcomers to the art. Please read on for more details.

Master Classes

Master Class with Joan Larkin
Saturday, April 14, 12:00-4:00pm & Sunday, April 15, 12:00-4:00pm
Application Deadline: Friday, March 16

Master Class with Tom Sleigh
Saturday, April 28, 1:00-5:00pm & Sunday, April 29, 1:00-5:00pm
Application Deadline: Friday, March 30

Master Class with Eileen Myles
Saturday, May 12, 12:00-4:00pm & Sunday, May 13, 12:00-4:00pm
Application Deadline: Friday, April 13

Master Class with Matthea Harvey
Saturday, May 19, 12:00-4:00pm & Sunday, May 20, 12:00-4:00pm
Application Deadline: Friday, April 20

Master Class with Carol Muske-Dukes
Saturday, June 9, 12:00-4:00pm & Sunday, June 10, 12:00-4:00pm
Application Deadline: Friday, May 4

Six-Week Open-Enrollment Classes

Winter Classes

Memory, Image and the Poem with Eléna Rivera
February 29-April 4

Poetic Prose and the Prose Poem with Barbara Henning
February 25-March 31

Prayer, Despair and Ecstasy with Ariana Reines
March 8-April 12

Spring Classes

The Memory Palace with Hettie Jones
April 11-May 16

The Whole Poem with Neil Shepard
April 12-May 24

Master Classes

Master Classes offer advanced writers of poetry an opportunity to work intensively with some of the most respected poets of our time. Applications are required, space is limited; $390 each.

Application Guidelines: Send three poems accompanied by a cover sheet with your name, address, email address and phone numbers to

Poets House
10 River Terrace
New York, NY 10282
Attn: Classes

or by email to classes@poetshouse.org. Poems must arrive by the designated deadline. No names or addresses should appear on the poems themselves.

Master Class with Joan Larkin
Saturday, April 14, 12:00-4:00pm & Sunday, April 15, 12:00-4:00pm
Application Deadline: Friday, March 16

Joan Larkin's My Body: New and Selected Poems, received the Publishing Triangle's Audre Lorde Award. She taught for 24 years at Brooklyn College and now teaches in Drew University’s low-residency MFA program.

Master Class with Tom Sleigh
Saturday, April 28, 1:00-5:00pm & Sunday, April 29, 1:00-5:00pmm
Application Deadline: Friday, March 30

Tom Sleigh is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Army Cats and Space Walk, which received the Kingsley Tufts Award. He teaches in the Creative Writing MFA Program at Hunter College.

Master Class with Eileen Myles
Saturday, May 12, 12:00-4:00pm & Sunday, May 13, 12:00-4:00pm
Application Deadline: Friday, April 13

Eileen Myles' recent books include Inferno (a poet's novel) and the poetry collection Snowflake / different streets. She is Professor Emeritus of Writing at UC San Diego and lives in New York.

Master Class with Matthea Harvey
Saturday, May 19, 12:00-4:00pm & Sunday, May 20, 12:00-4:00pm
Application Deadline: Friday, April 20

Matthea Harvey's third book of poems, Modern Life, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She teaches poetry at Sarah Lawrence and lives in Brooklyn.

Master Class with Carol Muske–Dukes
Saturday, June 9, 12:00-4:00pm & Sunday, June 10, 12:00-4:00pm
Application Deadline: Friday, May 4

Carol Muske-Dukes Carol Muske–Dukes is the current Poet Laureate of California and a professor at the University of Southern California. Her most recent books of poetry are Twin Cities and Sparrow, a National Book Award finalist.

Six-Week Open-Enrollment Classes

Open to all; no applications needed but registration is required; call (212) 431-7920 x2832 or email classes@poetshouse.org; $295 each.

Memory, Image and the Poem with Eléna Rivera
6 Wednesdays, February 29-April 4, 6:00-8:30pm

This workshop will focus on incorporating autobiographical material into poetry with an emphasis on each participant's writing. Students will read from a wide selection of poems and generate their work from notebooks, in-class writing, photographs and various other starting points that help evoke memories and spark the imagination.

Eléna Rivera is the author of the poetry collections The Perforated Map and Rememberance of Things Plastic. She won the 2010 Robert Fagles prize in translation for The Rest of the Voyage by Bernard Noël and teaches at NYU and Bard College.

Poetic Prose and the Prose Poem with Barbara Henning
6 Saturdays, February 25-March 31, 11:30am-2:00pm

Which of us, in his ambitious moments, has not dreamed of the miracle of poetic prose? (Baudelaire)
The prose poem is a border genre particularly suited to tracing/guiding consciousness. This workshop will explore poetic possibilities while writing five works in prose and also reading poetry and poetics from some 20^th century poetic movements — Imagism, Surrealism, Objectivism, Projective Verse and the New York School.

Barbara Henning is the author of three novels and seven books of poetry. Her most recent books are Cities & Memory, Thirty Miles from Rosebud and Looking Up Harryette Mullen. She teaches at Naropa University and Long Island University in Brooklyn.

Prayer, Despair and Ecstasy with Ariana Reines
6 Thursdays, March 8-April 12, 6:00-8:30pm

In this workshop, students will explore both secular and sacred work informed by altered states of consciousness and rigors of form. Readings from Celan, Césaire, Conrad, Donne, Plath, Rankine, Rimbaud and others, plus hymns, sutras, curses, and magic spells from Ancient Greece, contemporary Salem, Haiti and Appalachia will inform the creative process. The goal is to write poems with the torque and power of real magical acts.

Ariana Reines is the author of Mercury, Coeur de Lion and The Cow, which won Fence's Alberta Prize in 2006. TELEPHONE, her first play, was commissioned and produced by The Foundry Theater in 2009, winning Obies for direction and performance. She was the Roberta C. Holloway Lecturer in Poetry at UC Berkeley in 2009.

The Memory Palace with Hettie Jones
6 Wednesdays, April 11-May 16, 6:00-8:30pm

This workshop considers ways into your "memory palace," with its stored treasure of objects and events. Students will be encouraged to create “from the heart to the breath to the line,” with attention to "how you sound."

Hettie Jones is the author of twenty–three books for children and adults, including three poetry collections. Her first, Drive, won the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber Award. Jones is on the faculties of the New School's MFA Writing Program and the 92Y Poetry Center.

The Whole Poem with Neil Shepard
6 Thursdays, April 12-May 24 (skipping May 10^th), 6:00-8:30pm

From first draft to final draft, we require strategies for seeing the whole poem, both its full potential for content and its most satisfying form. Students will talk about strategies for the intense perception of the first draft as well as for "re-seeing" the poem, practicing the kind of deep revision that leads us to reconsider everything from word choice and vivid image to metaphoric subtext, grammatical pattern and inner music of the poem.

Neil Shepard's books of poems include I'm Here Because I Lost My Way, This Far from the Source, and (T)ravel/Un(t)ravel. Recently retired from his long-time job in the BFA Writing Program at Johnson State College (VT), he is the founder and editor of the literary magazine, Green Mountains Review.