Hey friends, welcome to The Forever Workshop. First time? Read this. Back again? Here’s what we’ve got for you today…

A workshop for:

Poets who want to explore the connection between the natural world and the human experience in their work.

Your instructor:

Madeleine Bazil — poet, writer, filmmaker, and author of Field Guide, an ecopoetics newsletter.

Key takeaways:

• Why most poets describe the world on autopilot (and how to stop)

• Using observation to gather unique details for our poetry

• Weaving time, nature, memory, and emotion into layered work

• How to balance societal and environmental issues with our own personal experiences

You will walk away from this workshop with a foundational understanding of how to craft deeply meaningful poetry using embodied observation.

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Hey, welcome to The Forever Workshop. First time? Read this. Back again? Here’s what we’ve got for you today…

A workshop for:

Poets who want to craft the perfect line (break)

Your instructor:

Shannan Mann — Creative Director at ONLY POEMS & Strange Pilgrims, and Executive Editor at Sub Club

Key takeaways:

• What line breaks actually do (beyond just making text look like poetry)

• Techniques for deciding where to enjamb (the technical term for line-breaking)

• How to know when you are (or perhaps ought to be) writing a prose poem instead

• The relationship between form and content

By the end, you’ll have practical strategies for making intentional line break choices—and the confidence to recognize what kind of poem is emerging from your pen.

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No, editors aren’t all prudes or anti-romantics who don’t want your passionate poetry. And yes, readers are dirty as heck and would love to read more exciting and authentic love and sex poems.

This workshop will help you craft a set of love and sex poems that are true to who you are while also focusing on how to get them out into the world.

Lessons

About The Instructor

Shannan Mann has been awarded or placed for the Palette Love & Eros Prize, Rattle Poetry Prize, Auburn Witness Prize, Foster Poetry Prize, Peatsmoke Summer Contest and Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize among others. Her poems appear in Poetry Daily, Black Warrior Review, Poet Lore, Gulf Coast, The Literary Review of Canada, EPOCH, december, & elsewhere. She is the Poet Laureate’s pick for Exile. Her essays appear in Tolka Journal and Going Down Swinging; they have been awarded the Alta Lind Cook Prize and the Irene Adler Essay Prize. She also translates Sanskrit poetry. Having worked as an editor and educator for nearly a decade, she now raises her baby, studies, writes, and runs ONLY POEMS.

Surrealism conjures Dali, Buñuel, Pizarnik. Prose poems conjure – for a lot of people – confusion. It’s a match made in dog heaven. The prose poem is the most unique form of poetry because it is not poetry and also not prose.

In this workshop you will learn the art of the prose poem and harness the power of surrealism to create tiny prose gems you can submit across the genre map (which is really a crayon-etched echo of a map, let’s be honest).

Lessons

About The Instructor

Karan Kapoor is the Editor in Chief of ONLY POEMS. Their recent work appears in Best New Poets (2024). A finalist for the Felix Pollak Prize & Charles B. Wheeler Prize book prizes and Diode, Tusculum Review, and Iron Horse Literary Review chapbook prizes, their poems have appeared in Best New Poets, AGNI, Shenandoah, Colorado Review, Cincinnati Review, North American Review, and elsewhere, fiction in JOYLAND and the other side of hope, and translations in The Offing and The Los Angeles Review. They’re currently on the editorial board of Alice James Books.

Figurative language isn’t just a tool; it’s the heartbeat of writing—the quickest way to bridge the gap between writer and reader, idea and impact. Figurative language creates crackling tension and emotional resonance, allowing the reader to experience the richness of each world through evocation and imagination. This workshop will break down the fundamentals and show you how to craft fierce and flawless figurative language that does the heavy lifting for you. 

Lessons

About Your Instructor

Hi! I’m Kelly Grace Thomas, poet, writer, coach, and an ocean-obsessed Aries from Jersey. I teach poetry courses year-round through my Substack, The Poetry Coach, and I have the coolest job: helping poets, fiction writers, and essayists bring their words (and books) into the world as a writing coach. I’m the author of Future Tense (forthcoming from Alice James Books, 2026) and Boat Burned (YesYes Books, 2020). My poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Sun, The Adroit Journal, 32 Poems, Los Angeles Review, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. I’ve also written three poetry craft books, which are currently taught in high schools across California, including those in the Los Angeles Unified School District. My screenplay, Magic Little Pills, won Best Feature at the Atlanta Comedy Film Festival. I received my MFA from Randolph College, where I was a Blackburn Fellow. I live in California, where I’m currently working on my third novel. More than anything, I love demystifying the craft without killing the magic. Together, we will focus on the “how” without canceling out the “wow.” I’m so excited to chat with you about how to craft fierce and flawless figurative language. You can view more of my writing at kellygracethomas.com or on Instagram @kellygracethomas.