Here are a few of the workshops and conferences I’ll be working at this (and next) year. If you’re interested, I’d love to see you there to talk about your poems!

1).  SALEM ARTS WORKS Two-Day Poetry Writing Workshop (Salem, NY)

10/6-10/7 2018

Christopher Salerno

“Exploring New Modes in Contemporary Poetry” (Saturday and Sunday)

In this two-day workshop we will identify and practice writing in various contemporary poetic modes found across the spectrum of well-known poets publishing today. With an eye toward the free verse lyric and narrative poetries, this workshop will employ a range of close readings and exercises to help you generate poems that make the most of the moment and keep the reader engaged. By surveying the current landscape of poetry and its dominant styles, manners, and techniques, we will explore the ways various celebrated contemporary poems work on the page as well as how we can locate and distinguish our own work in the larger conversation of craft.

2).  THE COLRAIN POETRY MANUSCRIPT CONFERENCE (Leicester, Massachusetts)

11/2-11/5 2018

A small, select group of poets will bring their completed or in-progress manuscripts to this lovely retreat, abutting a secluded 114-acre nature preserve and located just outside the city of Worcester, Massachusetts, to work closely with nationally-known poet and conference founder Joan Houlihan , poet and publisher Martha Rhodes (Four Way Books), and poet and editor Christopher Salerno (Saturnalia Books). For Colrain alums or poets with finalist or semi-finalist standing or with previous book (including chapbook) publication.

3). BAY TO OCEAN WRITERS CONFERENCE (Chesapeake College, MD)

3/9/2019

Christopher Salerno

“Writing the Contemporary Lyric Poem”

The free verse lyric poem offers an enormous range of possibilities and stylistic choices. In this workshop we will look at several poems of our contemporary moment, consider their forebears, their styles, modes, and approaches. We’ll see what about our own contemporary experiences and tendencies offer us the promise of poetry, and then, through generative exercises, we’ll attend to style and method in drafts of our own work.