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Rosalie Morales Kearns on the Joy of Poetry for Prose Writers
by Writing Workshops Staff
21 hours ago
Rosalie Morales Kearns never intended to become a poet. A fiction writer by training and temperament, she once described herself as "poetry-reluctant"—until a teaching assignment forced her to crack open a craft book and try writing poems alongside her students.
What she discovered surprised her: poetry wasn't just fun, it was liberating. Suddenly, the stories and images that had always swirled through her imagination could land on the page in a fraction of the time, distilled into something vivid and complete. Her very first published poem was written in Anglo-Saxon meter, about black bears and mountain laurel.
Now, in her Prose Writer's Intro to Poetry: A Generative Workshop, Kearns invites fellow prose writers to experience that same sense of discovery.
Over four weeks on Zoom, students will generate rough drafts using writing prompts designed to make poetic techniques accessible and playful—with no grading, no quizzes, and no critique. Instead, participants will read published poems for inspiration, experiment with devices like anaphora and compression, and even try transforming their own fiction into poetic form.
The result is a workshop built on laughter, mutual encouragement, and the radical permission to play with language in new ways. Whether you've been quietly curious about poetry or actively resistant to it, Kearns' generous teaching style and deep respect for each writer's vision make this an ideal place to begin.
Here is our Meet the Teaching Artist interview with Rosalie.
Writing Workshops: Hi, Rosalie. Please introduce yourself to our audience.
Rosalie Morales Kearns: My name is Rosalie Morales Kearns. I'm a writer of Puerto Rican and Pennsylvania Dutch descent, based in Albany, New York. Visionary/mystical experiences are a recurring theme in my fiction. My novel Kingdom of Women, set in a slightly alternate near-future, features a female Catholic priest who is dealing with unwanted visions. My short story "The Associated Virgins," which won a Pushcart Special Mention, deals with a skeptic who keeps being confronted by talking statues of the Virgin Mary. Also, I'm fascinated by the writing process and love to discuss the roles of intuition and intellect in creativity.
Writing Workshops: What made you want to teach this specific class? Is it something you are focusing on in your own writing practice?
Rosalie Morales Kearns: I'm primarily a fiction writer. I wouldn't say I was poetry-averse, but poetry-reluctant for sure. Then I took a job as a college instructor where the intro creative course I taught included both poetry and fiction. I had three months to teach myself how to write poetry before I walked into that classroom. Thanks to The Poet's Companion, by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux, and a pile of other poetry writing books, I knew enough to at least explain basic concepts and offer students examples of great poetry.
As I did the writing exercises along with the students, I made a discovery: Wait a minute, this is fun! There was nothing at stake. I was just a prose writer messing around with words on a page. I ended up polishing some of those exercises and submitting them to journals. My very first published poem was in Anglo-Saxon meter. It was about black bears and mountain laurel.
The second discovery was that there were things that I could only express in poetic form, like my poem "Text Message from the Angel of Death." In one of my more recently published poems, the narrator is at her own funeral; her ghost stands up on her coffin to make a speech, but the mourners are bored and inattentive. So yes, we fiction writers can still tell a story and be as whimsical or serious as we like, but finish halfway down page one instead of page 300. It's liberating. And I'd like to invite other prose writers into this experience.
Writing Workshops: Give us a breakdown of how the course is going to go. What can the students expect? What is your favorite part about this class you've dreamed up?
Rosalie Morales Kearns: Even though you might be learning something unfamiliar when we discuss specific techniques and how they work, the class is all about generating rough drafts of whatever we want to write. No grading, no quizzes, no critique.
You'll read published poems for inspiration and potentially as models to work from. The writing prompts will give you a chance to play with basic poetic techniques and discover what resonates for you. You're always free to take the prompt in an entirely different direction. Prompts include taking a story you've written (or a fairy tale) and expressing it as a poem (as Louise Glück does with "Gretel in Darkness"); and using poetic techniques (like anaphora, for example) in prose form.
You don't have to read your drafts aloud, but you'll find out how much fun it can be. In every class I've taught, both in-person and virtual, people enjoy applauding each other's efforts. And we laugh a lot. That's my favorite part—the laughing.
Writing Workshops: Who was your first literary crush?
Rosalie Morales Kearns: I had a mad crush on Paul Emanuel in Charlotte Brontë's novel Villette. He was so cantankerous and severe and uncompromising, and so unwilling to fall in love with the heroine. I suppose that's the premise of most romances, right, that the protagonists dislike each other at first?
Writing Workshops: What are you currently reading?
Rosalie Morales Kearns: I'm reading My Wars Are Laid Away in Books, a biography of Emily Dickinson by Alfred Habegger. I love how Dickinson was so immersed in a Calvinistic Protestant milieu and yet was so irreverent and such an unconventional thinker. I've also been reading a bunch of Golden Age mysteries published by the British Library. The most recent title I've read is Fear Stalks the Village, by Ethel Lina White, first published in 1932. But as a change of pace I picked up a lovely novel called The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife, by Anna Johnston. It features endearing people being kind to each other. A nice change from murder.
Writing Workshops: How do you choose what you're working on? When do you know it is the next thing you want to write all the way to THE END?
Rosalie Morales Kearns: I might look at some notes I've jotted down or something I've written in response to a prompt and think, "That could become a good story," but it doesn't always grab me. I work on the ones that keep floating up to my mind.
Writing Workshops: Where do you find inspiration?
Rosalie Morales Kearns: Scraps of dialogue come to me, or situations play out in my imagination, usually when I'm listening to music with my eyes closed, or doing dishes or staring out the window on a train. Sometimes a phrase that someone else has written—say, as an exercise in a writing group—will start me writing frantically. I love it when the words seem to just flow out of my pen instead of forming in my brain first.
Writing Workshops: What is the best piece of writing wisdom you've received that you can pass along to our readers? How did it impact your work?
Rosalie Morales Kearns: To very roughly paraphrase Toni Morrison: Write the book you would want to read. To me, it's a reminder that you have to be true to your own aesthetic sense and to produce the kind of art that gives you joy, regardless of literary trends and regardless of feedback you may receive from writing instructors or fellow writers who have very fixed ideas about what "works" and what doesn't work in fiction.
Writing Workshops: What is the worst piece of writing advice you've received, read, or heard? Why is this something you push against in your own writing practice?
Rosalie Morales Kearns: I'd say it's a tie between (a) Conflict is the basis of every story and if you don't include it, the story won't work; and (b) You have to make everything about a character crystal clear, including the motivation for their action. The underlying assumption behind these and so many other pieces of bad advice is the idea that there is one best way to do anything: structure a novel, treat setting, etc. The more widely you read, especially work from other cultures/traditions/languages/time periods, the more you realize that there are so many ways to tell a story.
Writing Workshops: What is your favorite book to recommend on the craft of writing? Why this book?
Rosalie Morales Kearns: I joyfully recommend two books. In Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping, Matthew Salesses gives a great explanation of why writing workshops are problematic, and reminds us that assumptions about plot structure (including the importance of conflict) are very much culture-bound.
Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative, by Jane Alison, guides us through narrative patterns that don't follow conventional patterns like the three-act structure or the Hero's Journey.
Writing Workshops: Bonus question—What's your teaching vibe?
Rosalie Morales Kearns: Very much respecting each writer's own vision and their own decisions about how to work on and revise their writing. I'm the last person in the world to tell you that something you've written "doesn't work."
If Kearns' approach to teaching resonates with you—a space where laughter comes easily, experimentation is encouraged, and every writer's voice is honored—then The Prose Writer's Intro to Poetry is your invitation to try something new. The four-week generative workshop begins Wednesday, April 22, 2026, and welcomes writers of all levels, no poetry experience required. Come discover what your prose voice sounds like when it breaks into verse.
