Strategies for Revising Poetry
What is your process for revision? How many of your works have something new to say? We will explore how revising can be rejuvenating. Create, develop, and share techniques. Strengthen your personal revision process. Feel free to bring old or recently written work. We will do one or two quick writing exercises and then the majority of this experience will be about revision practices and reviewing your own individual work. This is not a workshop where everyone reads your work and provides you critique in the widely-recognized structure. Instead, we will try a new method, developed by María Fernanda, inspired by linguistics.
This one-hour workshop is $20, as part of María Fernanda discounted workshops to provide greater access to the community. Consider gifting a workshop to a friend!
Click the “Sign up” button below and, within What’s this for?, please type in “Revise at APM” with your email address. You will receive a Welcome Note closer to the workshop date.
*Please note that registration is on Venmo due to the cost of ticketing platforms and the seating capacity of the venue. While the Venmo platform was used successfully by poetry participants from January 2024 to March 2025, please contact our team here if you experience any concerns.
Etymology: Writing Your Literary Lineage, A Poetry Workshop
Generations of people, much like language, change over time. Every once and a while, there are unknown relatives to add to our family tree or new words in an etymology chart. In this workshop, participants will have the opportunity to select a word, follow its root on an etymology chart, and write a poem inspired by each new word. Family tree templates will also be available to fill in with poetry. Generative writing exercises will be inspired by excerpts of poems, literary archives, and more.
Reading:
Theophanies by Sarah Ghazal Ali (9781949944587)
RSVP — politics-prose.com/list/online-class-etymology-writing-your-literary-lineage-poetry-workshop-2543
Speakeasy Open Mic ! Feature
Speakeasy Open Mic! is programmed by host Mariah “ Beyond Your Definition” Barber (they /she). On April 18, award-winning poet María Fernanda (she/hers) will feature! Please bring YOUR talent to share at the Open Mic.
Learn more about the host and the event below.
Poetry Night Panel - With Brandel France De Bravo & Julie Choffel - In Conversation With María Fernanda — At Conn Ave
Details at politics-prose.com/bravo-choffel
With wit and vulnerability, Brandel France de Bravo explores resilience in the face of climate change and a global pandemic, race, and the concept of a self, all while celebrating the power of breath as "baptism on repeat." Whether her inspiration is twelfth-century Buddhist mind-training slogans or the one-footed crow who visits her daily, France de Bravo mines the tension between the human desire for permanence and control, and life's fluid, ungraspable nature. Poem by poem, essay by essay, she builds a temple to the perpetual motion of transformation, the wondrous churn of change and exchange that defines companionship, marriage, and ceding our place on Earth: "not dying, but molting."
Brandel France de Bravo is the author of the poetry collections Provenance and Mother, Loose and the editor of Mexican Poetry Today: 20/20 Voices. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry 2024, 32 Poems, Barrow Street, Conduit, Diode, Salamander, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere.
Dear Wallace addresses the poet and insurance executive Wallace Stevens in an attempt to reconsider art, power, and creativity amid the demands of everyday responsibility. Exploring relationships between modernism, motherhood, poetry, and privilege, the speaker of these poems puts her daily routines in dialogue with his. Curious, funny, and wry, Julie Choffel confronts Stevens as an unlikely peer who lived and wrote in the same city and weather as she does now, imagining a present-day conversation about the many ways creative practice is informed by social context. As we struggle to marry creative independence with our communal obligations, the questions in these poems are more urgent than ever. Stevens, a proxy for beauty, inventiveness, and legitimacy, becomes an audience for the ennui, anxiety, and politics of care that characterize another kind of writer's life today.
Julie Choffel is an assistant professor in English at the University of Connecticut, Hartford. She is the author of The Hello Delay.
Bravo and Choffel will be in conversation with María Fernanda (she/hers), the founder of a poetry garden, the series where Black poets and gardeners discuss historic connections to gardens. Awarded The Norma Elia Cantú Award in Creative Writing, her poetry appears in Cheryl Clarke's born in a bed of good lessons inspired by Lucille Clifton, Cave Canem's Dogbytes, and elsewhere. Learn more about her poetry and workshops at mariafernandapoet.com.
This event is free with first come, first served seating.
To request accommodations for this event or to inquire about accessibility please email events@politics-prose.com ideally one week in advance of the event date. We will make an effort to accommodate all requests up until the time of the event.
Honoring Nikki Giovanni: A Close-Reading
Join award-winning poet María Fernanda in this workshop where we will close-read poems by globally-renowned poet and literary legend Nikki Giovanni. Participants will discuss the historical context of her work, as well as its impact. This workshop will look at Nikki Giovanni’s life and we can share perspectives on how she became the poet she is now.
Reading:
The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1998 by Nikki Giovanni (9780060724290)
RSVP — https://politics-prose.com/list/online-class-honoring-nikki-giovanni-close-reading-2556
you are: A Tribute to Nikki Giovanni
Honor the life of poet, activist, and renowned legend Yolande Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni with fellow poets and writers based in Washington, DC. Bring one of your favorite Nikki Giovanni poems, one of your own poems, or both to read aloud at this Open Mic. This event is free and open to the public. We will have a sign up sheet for people to read. This event will be one hour. Early arrival is encouraged. The title of this event comes from Nikki Giovanni's poem "Because," selected by the creative producer of this event, María Fernanda.
This event is free and open to the public. Early arrival is encouraged
Tickets at Kramers
Writing Now: The Monologue as Poetry
Annette Lawrence, Natasha Tretheway, Rita Dove — How do we remember? Join this diarist workshop where participants write their own set of creative journal entries, monologues, letter correspondence, and overall new creative works. Participants will explore published diary entries, monologues, epistolary writing, and more.
Reading:
Bellocq’s Ophelia by Natasha Tretheway
Sonata Mulattica by Rita Dove
RSVP — politics-prose.com/list/online-class-writing-now-monologue-poetry-2544
Lucille Clifton Through a Desert Lens
in-person
a collective poetry experience
Read and listen to Clifton's works in conversation with the desert. Generative writing exercises will be inspired by her works and writers in the same landscape from the 1970’s to now. Come ready to write poems inspired by her work and generative literary exercises with award-winning poet María Fernanda. This one-hour workshop is $20, as part of María Fernanda discounted workshops to provide greater access to the community. Consider gifting a workshop to a friend!
Click the “Sign up” button below and, within What’s this for?, please type in “Clifton at APM” with your email address. You will receive a Welcome Note closer to the workshop date.
*Please note that registration is on Venmo due to the cost of ticketing platforms and the seating capacity of the venue. While the Venmo platform was used successfully by poetry participants from January 2024 to February 2025, please contact our team here if you experience any concerns.
Oye DC
A group of strangers meet at a dinner party, only to find that they have more in common than not.
Tickets here — Oye DC is a night of English, Spanish, and Spanglish storytelling and poetry that celebrates Latine voices from across the Washington metro area.
Following the show there will be a talk-back with the artists.
This is Your Poem: A Tribute to Nikki Giovanni
Celebrate the life of poet, activist, and renowned legend Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni with fellow poets and writers based in Washington, DC. Bring one of your favorite Nikki Giovanni poems and a poem of your own to read aloud. We will have a sign-up sheet for people to read. This event will be one hour. Featured readers include Tricia Elam Walker, Nina Angela Mercer, Holly Bass, and María Fernanda.
This event is free and open to the public. Early arrival is encouraged.
The title of this event comes from Nikki Giovanni's poem "My House," selected by the creative producer of this event, María Fernanda.
To request accommodations for this event or to inquire about accessibility please email events@politics-prose.com ideally one week in advance of the event date. We will make an effort to accommodate all requests up until the time of the event.
See more at Politics & Prose
Break a Vase, A Poetry Workshop: Writing the Zuihitsu
Lecture and Discussion with Writing Exercises.
Participants will learn the classic Japanese genre Zuihitsu, defined by its literary emulation of a painter’s brushstrokes. This style gathers loosely connected single-line essays, fragmented ideas and, as of late, recycled images to create a single poem. Participants will delve into generative writing activities, where they will be encouraged to explore excerpts (or fragments) of flyers, magazine spreads, artist interviews, and more.
RSVP — politics-prose.com/list/online-class-break-vase-poetry-workshop-writing-zuihitsu-2542
Fade In: Reading Screenplays to Inspire Poetry
We will read a series of scenes from three different screenplays to consider screenwriting techniques that may strengthen our individual poetic voices. We will also read poems by Natasha Tretheway, Kamilah Aisha Moon, Danez Smith, and more. Screenplays range from independent films to Oscar-winning.
This one-hour workshop is typically $20, as part of María Fernanda’s discounted workshop series Let’s Write Poetry Saturdays to provide greater access to the community.
This workshop fee will be covered by the American Poetry Museum.
Sign Up
If you unable to tip, you may use the form below to provide your email address to receive the Welcome Note prior to the poetry workshop.
Assemblage: Writing the Contrapuntal
Learn the contrapuntal, a poetic form which blends two or more poems to be read in multiple directions. Participants will explore the written word as sculpture and delve into the sonic aspects of poetry. Expect to extend your range of sound in your poetry and to more easily move between various voices or tones in your work.
RSVP — writer.org/event/assemblage-writing-the-contrapuntal/
A True Revolution: Nikki Giovanni
in-person
a collective poetry experience
Learn about the literary legacy of globally-renowned literary legend, poet Nikki Giovanni. In this experience, we will receive our cues from The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni. Come ready to write poems inspired by her work and generative literary exercises with award-winning poet María Fernanda. This one-hour workshop is $20, as part of María Fernanda discounted workshops to provide greater access to the community. Consider gifting a workshop to a friend!
Click the “Sign up” button below and, within What’s this for?, please type in “Nikki at APM” with your email address. You will receive a Welcome Note closer to the workshop date.
*Please note that registration is on Venmo due to the cost of ticketing platforms and the seating capacity of the venue. While the Venmo platform was used successfully by poetry participants from January 2024 to December 2024, please contact our team here if you experience any concerns.