Massachusetts Statewide Poetry Calendar

It’s okay if you’re not weird (or if you are, for that matter), but these prompts definitely lean to the weird side. The situations are a bit strange, the images are a bit wacky, but, hopefully, they’ll be more than a bit fun. Get ready to think about what might be and what could happen. If you’re the type to imagine mysterious notes left in odd places or things that (probably) shouldn’t be possible, this is the (free!) workshop for you. For writers age 13-18 ONLY.

Art urges us to look more closely at the world around us, and at ourselves. In and around Boston, there’s an ever-changing gallery of portraits and messages from local artists. In this free generative writing workshop, participants will choose an image to have a “conversation” with. Each writer will be given prompts and questions in order to interact with their image. After having this dialogue with art, writers can pick eight of their favorite lines and arrange them into a working draft of an ekphrastic poem, to share with each other and the community. For writers age 13-18 ONLY.

Have you ever found an old photograph at a flea market and wondered: who are these people, and what is their story? That’s how Ransom Riggs wrote Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, structuring the plotline entirely around found photographs. Using Miss Peregrine as our model, this course will be all about looking for inspiration for your writing in the objects that surround you, creating narratives out of things that already exist. We will look at an array of items––old photographs, video footage, antique maps, even junk and trash––and find the stories and poems hidden within. This course will also explore the relationship between images and words, looking at examples such as Brian Selznick’s Wonderstruck and Tom Phillips’s A Humument. A great course for those who are visual artists in addition to writers. For writers age 13-18 ONLY.