CLASSROOMS

*Self-guided courses are ready when you are! Independent poets determine their own start date. Writer’s Groups should come to an agreement about what date you’d like to begin.

Keep Going: 10 Weeks to a More Resilient Writing Life

Hybrid course – Course content posted week to week on Wet.Ink plus optional one hour weekly live meetings on Google Meet for class discussion and some sharing. (Time determined by class vote before week 1.)

$500, 10  week course

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$600, 10 week course plus Jumpstarts for May + June + July

MONDAY May 5 – SUNDAY July 13

How can a poet shore up their writing life in times that try a person’s soul? We need to connect to our muses more than ever when times are tough, but it’s often hardest to do when we feel depleted!

In this class, you’ll examine your creative process through a series of activities and experiments designed to strengthen your relationship with your muse, to connect with mentor texts, and expand your literary community, whether it’s via engagement with our class, or empowering you to seek out more frequent connections with writers outside our classroom. Each week we’ll be guided by Austen Kleon’s book, Keep Going, (required) along with other brief supplemental materials. You’ll be encouraged to discuss your process, post discoveries and share new work (optional) without intense feedback. (Cheering each other on in response is encouraged, but no critiques necessary.) By the end of class, you’ll have a few more strategies for sailing your creative ship into clear sailing or the stormy seas of the next four years and beyond.

The Extravagant Image: Poems of Deep Delight

*Asynchronous, Wet.Ink

$275 Writers Group, 9 week course *3-5 members per group

Group votes on start date.

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$225 Independent, 8 week course

Start when you’re ready.

In this class, we’ll lean into our guilty pleasures to write poems of sleeping late, binging bad tv, reading popcorn novels, and sneaking the last brownie at midnight. Each week, we’ll read 3-4 model poems, interspersed with short popcorn reads from Bored Panda, LitHub, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. From these readings, we’ll write new poems from a prompt linked to that week’s guilty pleasure theme. Every week will also include optional viewing/listening assignments in order to give you multiple ways of approaching the prompt. We’ll write 7-8 poems of our obsessions, turned “poetry research” to allow indulgence to enrich your writing, even after the class is over.

Writing Winter Poems Inspired by Mary Oliver

*Asynchronous, Wet.Ink

Material is entirely distinct from Writing Summer Poems Inspired by Mary Oliver, and can be taken “out of order” or continued in Summer 2025!

$275 Writers Group, 8 week course *3-5 members per group

Group votes on start date.

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$225 Independent, 7 week course

Start when you’re ready.

In this class, we’ll reconnect with the solace and joy that nature can provide, using Mary Oliver’s work for thematic inspiration, instruction, and as a starting point to launch our own poems. Each week, we’ll consider a brief reading by Mary Oliver (a single poem, essay, or prose poem) placed in conversation with equally brief works from kindred spirit poets and writers in other genres. From these readings, we’ll write new poems from a prompt linked to that week’s topic. Every week will also include optional viewing/listening assignments, all inspired by Mary Oliver’s dictum of “Pay attention, be astonished, and tell about it.”

AND/OR

Natural Wonder: Poet as Scientist 

*Asynchronous, Wet.Ink

 Parts 1 & 2 can be taken in any order, separately or as a single 16-17 week long course. 

$275 Writers Group, 9 week course *3-5 members per group

Group votes on start date.

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$225 Independent, 8 week course

Start when you’re ready.

*$550 Combined course for Writer’s Groups, $450 for Independent Poets

Natural Wonder: Poet as Scientist, Part 1

In this class, we’ll focus on the necessity of wonder and close observation to the poet and the scientist alike. We’ll read and write poems of the universe and the atom, tides and tectonic plates, and we’ll consider the many ways we can explore and expand our metaphors through a different scientific field each week, all the while marveling at the intricacy and interconnectedness of life on our planet. We’ll read one or two model poems a week by Ross Gay, Jennifer Chang, Carla Duan, Rita Dove, Marie Howe and many others. We’ll also consider very short essays by Brian Doyle, Robert Macfarlane, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Matthew Devin Frank, and other brief works from Orion, Ecotone, Flyway and Fourth River, along with a few supplemental readings/listening/watching links. By the end of class you’ll have several fresh drafts, and a map into new ways to wonder through poetry.

Natural Wonder: Poet as Scientist, Part 2, (8 wk, Wet.Ink)*

*Parts 1 & 2 of this class offering are independent and may be taken out of order. In this class, we’ll continue to consider the necessity of wonder and close observation to the poet and the scientist alike through an entirely different set of fields and materials than in Part 1. We’ll read and write poems of winged creatures and water dwellers, underwater volcanoes and melting glaciers. We’ll consider the many ways to explore and expand our metaphors through a different scientific field each week, all the while marveling at the intricacy and interconnectedness of life on our planet.

Please use the contact form below if you’re interested in taking Poet as Scientist 1 and/or 2 as a Writer’s Group or on your own. Be sure to include details about your group, which module interests you, and when you’d like to begin. <3

May Jumpstarts

2 weeks of live Google Meet jumpstarts with prompts, quick-writes and a pdf full of extras to recharge your daily writing routine.

*Join us for all or just a few of these sessions! Everyone who registers will receive the pdf with prompts and extras at the end of our two weeks together.

$50 / $25 for 1st Time Jumpstarters

Sarah note: If the reduced rate would enable you to join us, please use that link. No questions asked! <3