Perhaps you’ve always wondered what people see in poetry. Maybe you’re already a practicing poet in need of some camaraderie and outside inspiration. Either way, this free, generative, welcoming poetry workshop is for you. Each session, we will read and closely examine one poem. We will discuss what the poem is doing and how it is doing it. What literary devices has the poet employed to make the ideas and emotions of the poem accessible? In what ways can the poem deepen our understanding of ourselves and others? How can looking through a poetic lens help us to better understand our own lives? Each discussion will be followed by a timed free-write inspired by that class’s poem or another prompt.

Facilitator: Francesca Bell is a poet and translator. She is the author of two collections of poetry, Bright Stain (Red Hen Press, 2019), a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Julie Suk Award, and What Small Sound (Red Hen Press, 2023). She translated Max Sessner’s collection, Whoever Drowned Here (Red Hen Press, 2023), from its original German. Her work appears widely in magazines such as ELLE, Los Angeles Review of Books, New England Review, North American Review, Mid-American Review, and Rattle. Bell grew up in Washington and Idaho and did not complete middle school, high school, or college. She is the former poetry editor of River Styx, the translation editor of Los Angeles Review, and the Marin County Poet Laureate. She lives with her family in Novato.