Who is this workshop for? This workshop is for poets with ideas they’d like to explore or who have poems they’re already working on that they’d like to bring to the group for further development.

About the workshop: In this workshop, we will both deepen poems you bring to class and generate new work. Through thoughtful feedback, we’ll ask: What is living here? Where does the poem draw us in? Where are the music, rhythm, sound, and silence leading? What shape is the poem taking?

We’ll also write from Robert Creeley’s idea of “the local”—the places that have entered us and that we have been given to make present and actual for others. We’ll explore our own local: place of birth, home, landscape, memory, and the interior and exterior environments that have shaped us. Through close attention to the particular, we’ll discover how poems can become forms of witness, affection, and love for the world we have been given.

About Justen: Justen Ahren is the founder of Devotion to Writing, a workshop, residency, and retreat helping writers cultivate a daily writing practice. He served as West Tisbury Poet Laureate from 2012-2015, and Martha’s Vineyard Poet Laureate from 2015-2018. Justen founded and directed Noepe Center for Literary Arts from 2007-2017. He’s published two collections of poetry, A Strange Catechism, and A Machine for Remember, and a forthcoming book on creating a daily writing practice based on his teaching writing for more than 10 years. Justen has an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. He’s been featured on NPR, been commissioned by Grammy award-winning composer Glen Roven, Wendy Taucher Dance Theater Opera, and John Sims’ Look Away project, and his poetry has been exhibited at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

Website: devotiontowriting.com‍ ‍

Personal artist’s pages: justenahren.com

Instagram: @devotion_to_writing