Just Announced: Poetry Master Class with Sarah Manguso

Our winter 2011 semester has begun with 5 classes total in fiction and nonfiction.  I’ve always wanted to offer instruction in poetry, too, so I’m pleased to announce that the acclaimed poet and prose writer Sarah Manguso will teach a one-day master class in poetry on Saturday, April 9th.  This will be a 3-hour course unlike anything Writing Workshops Los Angeles has offered before, both in content and course structure.  Sarah and I have discussed this seminar in depth, and I’m really excited to have it on the schedule!

Please scroll down for the course description and other information, including instructor bio.

Email writingworkshopsla@gmail.com if you’d like to sign up!

Poetry Master Class
(taught by Sarah Manguso in Los Feliz)

Saturday, April 9, 2021
3:00 to 6:00 p.m.

Enrollment limit: 8 students
Fee: $120

This one-day master class is designed for poets of all experience levels who want to become more attentive readers and writers. The instructor will discuss the various functional components — syntax, semantics, lineation, lexicon, imagery, rhetoric, tone — of one poem by each participant, with particular attention to the component that supplies that poem’s propelling engine. She will then present a “companion work” by an established writer that uses similar engines, and suggest possible revisions. She’ll also conduct two exercises: one an exercise in content generation, the other a revision/compression exercise that the class will do collaboratively.

This master class will take place in the instructor’s home in Los Feliz, where sparkling water, fresh lemonade, and snacks will be served.

Application protocol: Once you sign up, you will be asked to email two poems directly to the instructor.  The instructor will choose one poem to present to the group. Before the class, all participants will receive an electronic document containing all poems and companion works to be presented during the class.

A writing prompt can be provided for anyone who would like to sign up but is intimidated by the prospect of submitting work beforehand.

Instructor Bio:
Sarah Manguso is the author, most recently, of the memoir The Two Kinds of Decay (2008), named a New York Times Sunday Book Review Editors’ Choice and a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and Time Out Chicago. Her next book, The Guardians, a prose elegy, will be published next year. Her other books include the story collection Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape (2007) and the poetry collections Siste Viator (2006) and The Captain Lands in Paradise (2002), which was named a Favorite Book of the Year by the Village Voice. Honors for her writing include a Hodder Fellowship, the Rome Prize, and residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo. She has been a faculty member of the BFA writing program at the Pratt Institute and of the MFA writing programs at Columbia, Fairfield, and the New School universities. Born and raised near Boston, she was educated at Harvard and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She recently moved from New York to Los Angeles, where she has two lemon trees.