2025 Summer Writing Retreat - Poetry
Course: “Attention and Transformation: How Poetry Helps Us Live”
Instructor: Sasha West
Class Assistant: Sarah Renee Beach
Week One
Sunday, July 6
7:00-8:00 PM CDT / Orientation Session: Hear from your instructor and learn all about the month ahead!
Event recording (available until August 31, 2025)
Monday, July 7
6:30-9:30 PM CDT / Write-in session: Join fellow SWR students for this virtual writing session. You’ll set intentions at the beginning, turn mics and cameras off for writing time, and then come back together at the end to share how the session went.
Tuesday, July 8
12:00-1:00 PM CDT / Lunchtime Craft Talk: “Atmosphere and Tone” with Andrew Porter: Take a mid-day break to learn how to create atmospheric writing and strike a particular tone in your work.
Event recording (available until August 31, 2025)
6:30-9:30 PM CDT / Session One – Tools for Carrying the Poem Across: In poems, descriptive tools help us understand our material, and they help a reader feel our words. We’ll begin with core poetic tools including: metaphor, extended metaphors, verbs as the engine of tone, and effective sensory details.
Event recording (available until August 31, 2025), Class 1 Slides, Description Poems Packet, Metaphor Poems Packet
Wednesday, July 9
6:30-9:30 PM CDT / Write-in session: Join fellow SWR students for this virtual writing session. You’ll set intentions at the beginning, turn mics and cameras off for writing time, and then come back together at the end to share how the session went.
Saturday, July 12
10:00-11:30 AM CDT / Saturday Craft Seminar “Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird: The Art of Eastern Storytelling” with Henry Lien: Author and writing instructor Henry Lien will explore how storytelling staples in the West, such as the three-act structure and themes of empowerment and change, are far from universal. He will introduce the East Asian four-act structure (kishōtenketsu), as well as circular and nested structures, and explain how Eastern value systems such as collectivism can dictate story structures, using examples ranging from the film Parasite to The 1,001 Nights to the Mario video game franchise.
Event recording (available until August 31, 2025), Presentation Outline
Week Two
Monday, July 14
6:30-9:30 PM CDT / Write-in session: Join fellow SWR students for this virtual writing session. You’ll set intentions at the beginning, turn mics and cameras off for writing time, and then come back together at the end to share how the session went.
Tuesday, July 15
12:00-1:00 PM CDT / Lunchtime Craft Talk: “Finding Meaning Everywhere” with A. Kendra Green: Take a mid-day break to learn how to find meaning and inspiration in the world around you.
Event recording (available until August 31, 2025)
6:30-9:30 PM CDT / Session Two – The Self as a Source of Knowledge: Walt Whitman said we contain multitudes. How do we access all that we are in a poem? In this session, we’ll look at how the speaker of a poem changes what we know, think, feel, notice, and say. We’ll try out self-portraits, various voices, and persona poems to see how they lead us to different material.
Event recording (available until August 31, 2025), Class 2 Slides, Self-Portrait Poems Packet, Speaker as Parts Poems Packet, Speaker Outside Self Poems Packet
Wednesday, July 16
6:30-9:30 PM CDT / Write-in session: Join fellow SWR students for this virtual writing session. You’ll set intentions at the beginning, turn mics and cameras off for writing time, and then come back together at the end to share how the session went.
Thursday, July 17
7:00-8:30 PM CDT / WLT Third Thursday “Remixes & Reimaginings: Seeing Stories Anew” with Kalynn Bayron, Gabe Cole Novoa, and Vaishnavi Patel: For our July Third Thursday, join us for a conversation about why and how we adapt and reimagine popular fairytales, classics, and mythologies as writers.
Week Three
Monday, July 21
6:30-9:30 PM CDT / Write-in session: Join fellow SWR students for this virtual writing session. You’ll set intentions at the beginning, turn mics and cameras off for writing time, and then come back together at the end to share how the session went.
Tuesday, July 22
12:00-1:00 PM CDT / Lunchtime Craft Talk: “Writing Hybrid Forms” with Jasminne Mendez: Take a mid-day break to learn about the challenges and rewards of eschewing genre and writing hybrid forms.
Event recording (available until August 31, 2025), Presentation Slides
6:30-9:30 PM CDT / Session Three – How Form Shapes Meaning: Even if you aren’t writing traditional forms, form determines what a poem can hold (while it still holds together). We’ll try on contemporary poems that use repetitions, lists, and litanies to convey a complex, everchanging world. We’ll study what makes stories powerful in narrative poems.
Event recording (available until August 31, 2025), Class 3 Slides, Form Packet, Form Repetition Narrative Packet, Longer Formal Studies PacketWednesday, July 23
6:30-9:30 PM CDT / Write-in session: Join fellow SWR students for this virtual writing session. You’ll set intentions at the beginning, turn mics and cameras off for writing time, and then come back together at the end to share how the session went.
Thursday, July 24
7:00-8:00 PM CDT / Meet-up & Trivia Night: Test your literary knowledge and mix and mingle with fellow SWR writers.
Week Four
Monday, July 28
6:30-9:30 PM CDT / Write-in session: Join fellow SWR students for this virtual writing session. You’ll set intentions at the beginning, turn mics and cameras off for writing time, and then come back together at the end to share how the session went.
Tuesday, July 29
6:30-9:30 PM CDT / Session Four – Revision as a Chemical Change: How do we find more in our work than anyone can predict, even us? Using examples of how professional writers revise, we’ll practice techniques that we can use with any poems and create new exercises to use with your specific poems. You’ll leave with an abundance of ways to transform your work.
Event recording (available until August 31, 2025), Class 4 Slides, Bishop Drafts Packet
Wednesday, July 30
6:30-9:30 PM CDT / Write-in session: Join fellow SWR students for this virtual writing session. You’ll set intentions at the beginning, turn mics and cameras off for writing time, and then come back together at the end to share how the session went.
Thursday, July 31
7:00-8:30 PM CDT / Student Reading Night: Select students will read from their works in progress to a warm and receptive audience of fellow Summer Writing Retreat writers and instructors, celebrating the culmination of a week full of craft and community.