Instructor CD Eskilson is a trans poet, editor, and translator. Their work appears in The Offing, Pleiades, Hayden's Ferry Review, Ninth Letter, and others. They are a recipient of the C.D. Wright/Academy of American Poets Prize, as well as a Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and Pushcart Prize nominee. Their debut poetry collection, Scream / Queen, is forthcoming from Acre Books in 2025. CD is assistant poetry editor for Split Lip Magazine and a member of the editorial board for Exposition Review, where they were previously poetry editor. CD earned their MFA from the University of Arkansas where they received the Walton Family Fellowship in Poetry, the James T. Whitehead Award in Poetry, the James E. & Ellen Wadley Roper Fellowship in Creative Writing, and the Lily Peter Fellowship in Translation.

Learn more about CD in our Meet the Teaching Artist series.

Why Formal Constraints?

While at first counter-intuitive, constraints are often liberating during the craft of a poem and help take our work in new directions. Here, we will consider how surprise and subversion come to the forefront of formal poetry by writers as they deeply engage with challenging subjects.

Embrace Tradition and Innovation:

While “traditional” poetic verse has for decades been claimed by aggrieved chauvinists or stuffy gatekeepers, dexterity, linguistic dynamism, and reinvention are staples of formal poetry. In fact, contemporary writing reveals the vast poetic possibilities available through forms like the sonnet, ghazal, or villanelle. Newer forms like the duplex and burning haibun further underscore the creative potential of utilizing formal constraints in our work to address difficult topics.

What You'll Do:

This workshop will consider how surprise and subversion can be brought to the forefront of formal poetry to deepen our engagement with challenging subjects. We will practice writing in various forms, from sonnets to golden shovels, from found poems to haiku.

We will interrogate the structural elements of poetic forms (meter, stanza, repetition, rhyme) to locate their creative and oftentimes radical potentials. We will also develop our own invented poetic forms! 

Weekly reading packets will be provided as we explore the work of diverse poets reinventing traditional forms across a variety of books, anthologies, and other literary media. Selections include poems by Patricia Smith, Shane McCrae, Diane Seuss, Jericho Brown, Thom Gunn, and C.T. Salazar, among others.

COURSE OUTLINE:

• Week 1: The “F” word: Introduction to form
• Week 2: Workshop
• Week 3: 2s and 3s: Couplets, Tercets, and poetic stanzas
• Week 4: Workshop
• Week 5: Little Song: The Sonnet and Sound
• Week 6: Workshop
• Week 7: Say it again: Refrain forms
• Week 8: Workshop

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

• Craft Mastery: Craft original poems using received, experimental, and invented poetic forms;
• Form Expertise: Identify key traditional poetic forms such as the sonnet, villanelle, ghazal, and others;
• Critical Insight: Articulate the relationship between form and content in published poems, as well as discuss the various craft elements found in their own writing;
• Feedback Skills: Offer considerate, constructive feedback to peers on their work in both written and verbal forms;
• Polish and Perfect: Employ various revision and editing strategies to polish new drafts of writing.
  

ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE: