Starts Sunday, March 31st, 2024

Open to All writers!

Any questions about this class? Use the Chat Button (lower left) to talk with us.

Taught by Lauren Davis, author of the forthcoming short story collection The Milk of Dead Mothers (YesYes Books) and the poetry collections Home Beneath the Church (Fernwood Press) and When I Drowned (Aldrich Press), and the chapbooks Each Wild Thing’s Consent (Poetry Wolf Press), and The Missing Ones (Winter Texts). She holds an MFA from the Bennington College Writing Seminars.

Read an Interview with Lauren on Structuring the Chapbook Poetry Manuscript.

The order of poems within a manuscript can create a variety of experiences for readers. With the proper sequence, poems can build on each other and inform one another. Your poems may be itching to tell a larger story, one that they can’t communicate without the context of each other. Do you have a pile of twenty to thirty-five pages of poetry that are calling your name? Let’s take your work to the next level!

Do your poems all relate to each other in some way? Is there one main theme and multiple smaller themes? Does the first poem echo the last poem? Does it matter? Does the chapbook have a narrative arch that follows time in a linear fashion? Does it move back and forth through time? Does your manuscript contain "connective tissue"? What does that even mean?

Please note that participants will need to have already written twenty to thirty-five pages of poetry that they are willing to collect into one chapbook manuscript.

Students will read selections from Ordering the Storm by Susan Grimm.

COURSE OUTLINE:

• Week One: Definition and History of Chapbooks
• Week Two: How to Choose the Order of Your Poems
• Week Three: Basic Formatting of a Manuscript and Why It Matters
• Week Four: Exchange Manuscripts
• Week Five: Receive Feedback
• Week Six: Looking Forward
  

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

• Appreciate the form and function of chapbook manuscripts.
• Explore the basics and purpose of formatting a manuscript.
• Receive feedback on the overall structure of the manuscript from both peers and the instructor.
• Set intentions to help achieve writing and publishing goals.
  

ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:

This class is entirely asynchronous which means you complete the weekly assignments on your own schedule. There are no set meeting times in order to allow for greater participation; your cohort will consist of writers from across different time zones, which allows for a wonderful diversity of voices.

Along with your weekly deadlines there is plenty of interaction with Lauren and your peers within Wet Ink, our dedicated online classroom. Craft materials, lectures, reading assignments, and writing prompts are all available through the online classroom. Students also post work and provide and receive feedback within the online classroom environment.

You can get the work done as you see fit week-to-week, so it is perfect for any schedule. There are discussion questions each week inspired by the assigned readings and topics in the lecture notes. Students are encouraged to take these wherever is most compelling and/or useful for them. Lauren engages with these discussions throughout the week and you will receive feedback from all assigned writing activities.

HOW DOES WET INK WORK?

Wet Ink was built and designed specifically for online writing classes. Wet Ink is private, easy to use, and very interactive. You can learn more about the Wet Ink platform by Watching a Class Demo.

• Instructor: Lauren Davis
• Class starts Sunday, March 31st, 2024
  
• Course is fully ONLINE; students can work according to their own schedule within weekly deadlines. Once you have enrolled the instructor will send you a link to our online classroom, provided via Wet Ink.

Instructor Lauren Davis is the author of the forthcoming short story collection The Milk of Dead Mothers (YesYes Books) and the poetry collections Home Beneath the Church (Fernwood Press) and When I Drowned (Aldrich Press), and the chapbooks Each Wild Thing’s Consent (Poetry Wolf Press), and The Missing Ones (Winter Texts). She holds an MFA from the Bennington College Writing Seminars. She is a former Editor in Residence at The Puritan’s Town Crier, and she is the winner of the Landing Zone Magazine’s Flash Fiction Contest. Her work has appeared in numerous literary publications and anthologies including Prairie Schooner, Spillway, Poet Lore, Ibbetson Street, Ninth Letter and elsewhere. Davis lives with her husband and two black cats on the Olympic Peninsula in a Victorian seaport community.