Led by Lauren Brazeal Garza, a poet and Ph.D. candidate in literature at the University of Texas at Dallas. A graduate of Bennington's MFA program in writing, she is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Gutter (YesYes Books, 2018), a memoir-in-verse which chronicles her homelessness and subsequent recovery as a teenager. She has also published three chapbooks, including Santa Muerte Santa Muerte: I was Here Release Me, forthcoming from Tram Editions in 2023. 

For centuries, readers and writers have turned to poetry to find hope and heal from illness, trauma, loss, and grief. Within this four-week generative poetry workshop, we will discover ways to seek healing through writing our poetry. We will discuss how articulating our grief and memories on the safety of the page can help us learn resilience and find healing and how famous poets in the past have used verse to be heard and find solidarity and strength.

Each week, we will study poems of healing by poets such as Mary Oliver, Jamaal May, Paisley Rekdal, and Elizabeth Alexander. Each session will discuss one famous poem, explore different approaches to writing as a means of healing, and a generative prompt that encourages a new approach or technique. Each meeting will also offer the opportunity for each student to workshop one of their own poems with the group for the purpose of receiving constructive, supportive feedback.

Through our discussions and explorations, we will also discover how using literary devices, like metaphor, sound, sensory details, sentence structure, and line breaks, can help us create compelling poems that allow us to more powerfully articulate our thoughts and emotions. We will also draft one poem each week that experiments with using the techniques we learn in class, and receive weekly private feedback from me.

At the close of the course, each student will choose one poem they are most proud of to share with the class during our final Zoom session as part of a celebratory reading.

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

• We will study and learn a variety of techniques used by contemporary poets who write about healing and resilience in unique and interesting ways.
• Explore and experiment with new techniques in our own work by workshopping one draft of a poem per week to the class, begun during in-class writing sessions based on open-ended generative prompts.
• Students will be able to submit one draft of a poem per week to me to receive private constructive feedback.
• Gain experience reading our work in front of a supportive audience of our peers throughout the course.
• We will leave the course equipped with a better toolbox for crafting compelling poems which more powerfully articulate our thoughts and emotions.
  

TESTIMONIALS:

“I love love loved this course! It was super fun and I had a great time. I especially appreciated how much freedom we were given for the writing prompts, and the structure of the workshop and peer comments were so effective and helpful.” -David R.

“This was one of the most charming and well-put-together courses I've had the pleasure of taking. Discussions were open and full of ideas, coupled with informative lectures. If you participated in class, the rewards were clear and obvious. Ms. Brazeal Garza was an excellent teacher for this subject and genuinely had me interested in new topics.” -Tiffany W.

"Lauren is phenomenal! She is extremely passionate, kind, and smart. She has the student's best interests at heart and makes great points on improving our writing. One of the best writing instructors I've had. I hope more writers take her classes in the future. She is also very organized and is a great overall teacher" -Megan K.

"This was most definitely one of my favorites from this year. The course was extremely flexible, and I found substantial value from the course material” -Mark L.

ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE: