Mining Our Obsessions: A Generative Poetry Workshop with Lauren Davis

Begins Sunday, December 13th, 2026

Live Seminar via Zoom from 2:00 PM - 4:30 PM ET

🌍 Class Times by Time Zone: Los Angeles (PST): 11:00 AM – 1:30 PM / Chicago (CST): 1:00 PM – 3:30 PM / New York (EST): 2:00 PM – 4:30 PM / London (GMT): 7:00 PM – 9:30 PM / Berlin (CET): 8:00 PM – 10:30 PM

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Instructor Lauren Davis is the author of the short story collection The Nothing (YesYes Books, 2025) and the poetry collections Home Beneath the Church (Fernwood Press) and When I Drowned (Kelsay Books). Her fiction won the Landing Zone Magazine's Flash Fiction Contest, and her fiction and poetry have been finalists for the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize, the Press 53 Award for Short Fiction, and the Big Other Book Award for Fiction, among others. Her poetry, fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous literary publications and anthologies, including Prairie Schooner, Spillway, Poet Lore, Ibbetson Street, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Bennington College Writing Seminars. Davis lives with her husband on the Olympic Peninsula in a Victorian seaport community.

Meet the Teaching Artist: 

Get to know Lauren in our Meet the Teaching Artist series.

Who is this class for?

This one-day online poetry workshop is for poets at all levels who are looking for support and inspiration to get words on the page. Whether you are just beginning to write poems or you have published widely and want a jolt of new material, you are welcome here. No prior manuscript or prepared work is required — you will arrive empty-handed and leave with drafts.

What to expect:

Allow your obsessions to work for you. Join Lauren Davis for a one-day intensive poetry workshop focused on mining your mental addictions, whether it be an idea, person, place, or thing. The things we return to compulsively — a landscape, a lost person, a single recurring image — are rarely accidents. They are the richest material a poet has, and this generative poetry workshop is built to help you dig into yours rather than around it.

You will choose one of your obsessions to indulge, and Davis will provide writing prompts designed to open it up from unexpected angles. Prompts draw on the work of contemporary poets including Sharon Olds, Diane Seuss, and Natalie Diaz — writers who have each built major bodies of work by refusing to look away from their own preoccupations. Between prompts, you will freewrite to discover more about the shape and texture of what holds your attention.

This is a low-pressure, high-output creative writing workshop. Sharing is entirely voluntary. Participants who choose to read aloud will receive verbal, strengths-based feedback from the instructor, focused on the most compelling elements of the new work. By the end of the session, you will have a small body of writing that speaks to what haunts and fascinates you most.

What are the writing goals?

In this course, students will produce at least three new poems in draft form. Participants will generate original work in response to a sequence of instructor-designed prompts and freewriting exercises. Sharing is voluntary; those who read their work aloud will receive verbal, strengths-based feedback from Lauren Davis during the session, focused on the strongest and most promising elements of each piece.

Readings

All course materials, including prompts and reading excerpts, will be provided via a handout distributed to participants on the day of the workshop. Prompts are inspired by the work of contemporary poets including Sharon Olds, Diane Seuss, and Natalie Diaz. No advance reading or preparation is required.

COURSE OUTLINE

This is a single-session, one-day seminar. The workshop moves through three stages:

Stage One: Learn how obsessions can work in a poet's favor.

Stage Two: Freewrite to discover more about your own obsession.

Stage Three: Create first drafts of original poetry based on writing prompts.

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

- Learn how obsessions can work in a poet's favor
- Freewrite to discover more about your own obsession
- Create first drafts of original poetry based on writing prompts
- Leave the session with at least three new poems in draft form
- Receive verbal, strengths-based feedback on work you choose to share
- Gain a repeatable generative method you can return to long after the workshop ends

PAYMENT OPTIONS:

Tuition is $99 USD. You can pay for the course in full or use Shop Pay or Affirm to pay over time with equal Monthly Payments. Both options are available at checkout.

ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:

- Instructor: Lauren Davis
- Begins Sunday, December 13th, 2026
- Class will meet for one session via Zoom on Sunday, 2:00 PM - 4:30 PM ET
- Tuition is $99 USD.