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Poetry’s nimble ability to traverse language, to compress ideas and meaning while expanding them at the same time, to generate movement and fluidity in all directions, makes it one of the most versatile, shape-shifting creative modalities. So much of that “leaping” or shape-shifting happens through a letting go of control, a willingness to allow the words to speak and do for themselves, and an openness toward their free association with one another. This workshop will explore the poetic leap while examining how a language of free association can deepen a poem’s potential to do and say more. We will read and discuss poems together, and we will practice techniques that encourage creative risk while moving us toward new possibilities in our writing.

Mai Der Vang is the author of Yellow Rain (Graywolf Press, 2021), and Afterland (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the 2016 Walt Whitman Award of the…