70 Best Poetry Creative Writing Classes in 2024

For this course, you’re encouraged to bring drafts that have stymied your best efforts. Together, we’ll examine strategies for revision and discuss first and final drafts by a range of poets. You’ll learn valuable approaches to revision that will inform your writing choices beyond the classroom.

Do you have a pile of abandoned story drafts or poems? One quarter of a memoir or novel manuscript that you're still not sure what to do with? In this generative class, we'll act as gardeners, using those old drafts as compost to create fertile ground for new pieces.

Poets Studio is based on the idea that focusing on goals is the key to lasting growth as a poet. It is designed to give form and focus to your poetry writing.

Through a series of engaging writing exercises, we will mine our experiences and imagination for material and bring what we find to life on the page, constructing characters and settings, shaping vivid dialogue, creating imagery, and exploring the nuances of voice.

Why do some poems make your heart skip while others leave you cold? In this class, we’ll explore some of the key building blocks of good poetry, including voice, metaphor, imagery, and the line.

Take a crack at a sestina or learn how to write a better one. This poetic form can build your literary muscles with repetition, diction, description, and more. We’ll brainstorm ideas, go over the "rules" and study how a few good sestinas work.

What does ‘truth’ mean in poetry? How can we use multiple perspectives in our work? Can we be ‘reliable’ narrators of our own memories? This workshop will explore what it means to subvert this presumption and to play with ideas of (un)reliability, truth and authenticity.

Have you ever felt stuck for inspiration? This two-hour experience will guide you through an ancient tactic that poets have long relied on for inspiration: ekphrasis.

In this 2-hour generative writing workshop, we’ll revisit coming of age milestones that our adult-selves can now see with compassion. We’ll read multi-genre excerpts as examples, discuss how writers examine those awkward teen years in literature, and write with guided prompts inspired by the pieces.

Held mostly outdoors at Shelby Bottoms, this workshop combines naturalist and forest bathing techniques to enhance observation skills. Participants will engage in creative writing exercises to translate these immersive observations into vivid written descriptions.

This 10-week online course from Oxford University, taught by Dr. Simon Pomery, is designed for flexible learning. It involves tutor-guided forum discussions and self-paced study, focusing on reading and activities around poetry. Suitable for those looking to explore poetry writing in a structured yet flexible environment​​​​​​​​​​.

In this generative poetry workshop, participants will study the work of poets skilled at creating deeply realized images. With award-winning poet Melissa McEver Huckabay, you will explore the effects imagery has on readers and practice writing your own surprising and exciting poems through Melissa's helpful prompts and exercises.