Poets Studio is based on the idea that focusing on goals is the key to lasting growth as a poet. Poets Studio is a weekly workshop that will run from Sep 22 - May 18 for 30 weeks. It is designed to give form and focus to your poetry writing. The Poets Studio is open to applications from all poets. Poets join the Poets Studio as members and attend for the entire session. This creates the Poets Studio's special experience: a steady, supportive, and comprehensive study of your poetry among other poets.

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To Apply: Please send ten (10) pages of poems and a 250 words "Statement of Goals" to the Attic Institute.

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What does it mean to write toward something you can’t quite name:  the sacred, the ineffable, the ecstatic, the sublime?  Devotion, as a poetic impulse, transcends religious tradition. It is a practice of sustained attention to what we love most deeply, to what won’t let us go, to what exceeds ordinary language. We will study how poets across time and cultures have found form for their deepest desires and shaped that longing into art — then bring those lessons to bear on our own work. Reading list: Rumi, Hafez, St. John of the Cross, John Donne, Rilke, Denise Levertov, Mary Oliver, Christian Wiman and others. Create and share your work in a supportive environment that values rigor, exploration and joy. We hope you will join us.

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In this generative workshop we will reimagine our losses and bring light to the shadows. This creative exploration provides moments of great joy and connection. It is so satisfying to interrupt the stubborn "arrangements" in our psyches that are not serving us well. Writing consciously about grief has the potential to stir greater compassion for ourselves and others. You can expect to discover new threads in your work that inspire and energize fresh creative commitments and old dormant intentions.

Led by Ed Sage, Teaching Fellow at the Attic Institute.

Ed Sage's writing appears in ZYZZYVA, Verseweavers, The Portland Review, 4th Street Journal, The Ponder Review, Plainsongs, BULL Lit and The Passionfruit Review.

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What makes a great personal essay? What makes reading some essays feel like we’ve learned not only about the author’s experiences, but about ourselves and the world around us? In this class, we’ll read and discuss a few classic and contemporary personal essays, work on original essay prompts, and share our own work. Students can either bring a work in progress that they'd like to workshop, or become inspired to begin writing a new one. By the end, we’ll have a greater appreciation of the craft of personal essays, and a better understanding of how to look beyond ourselves and make our personal essays less personal and more universal.

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This workshop is intended for students who seek accountability in the form of a supportive community to share and receive feedback on their works in progress. Whether you are writing a memoir, essay or a piece that’s still taking shape, this Nonfiction workshop offers deadlines, camaraderie and support as you move forward with your work.

Prerequisite: Completion of a previous Online or AM Memoir class with Laura Moulton

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"Attention is a limited resource, so pay attention to where you pay attention." ~ Howard Rheingold

Writing in the age of distraction and dire news often requires a Herculean effort to stay focused. What does it mean to reclaim our attention and what kind of revolutions can we mount with a pen, a notebook and renewed focus?  In this workshop we’ll pay attention to what we pay attention to, retool our writing practices and cultivate the concentration needed to do deep work. Each week you’ll be offered one Reading and one Action to complete, as well as a writing prompt. In class you’ll have a chance to report your observations and experience.

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Place shapes us before we have words for it. This workshop looks at how poets have written about landscape, region, and the ground they know, or have lost, with a keen eye for detail, earned veracity, and vitality. Over six weeks we will read poets for whom place is sacred ground: Heaney on the Irish bog, Jeffers on the California coast, Forché on Central America torn by war. We will look how the physical world enters into the poem and what it carries when it does, paying particular attention to what arises in times of conflict. Writers will bring their own landscapes to the table and develop new ways of translating the signals they carry to the page.

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