Oct. 17: Workshop at Twiggs Gallery in Boscawen – Gather Ye Obsessions: Writing Poems of Passion and Pathos

GATHER YE OBSESSIONS: Writing Poems of Passion and Pathos

THREE WEEK CLASS | Thursdays, Oct 17, 24, & Nov 7 from 1 – 3 pm

Instructor: Jennifer Militello, Poet Laureate of New Hampshire

Cost: $145 class fee

Learn more and register: www.twiggsgallery.org/classes

What allows a poem to draw us in? How do we connect fully with or become gripped by a group of words shaped on the page? Often what we feel is the writer’s pressing need to say what has been said, the commitment and the drive, the duende of what’s before us. In this workshop we will look at sample poems that prioritize this ‘passion and pathos’ and explore our own laundry lists of subjects and obsessions before crafting poems that seek to meet the charge: to write a poem to which we might, as Lorca says, “fuse in a yearning beyond visible expression.”

BIO: Jennifer Militello is the Poet Laureate of New Hampshire. She is the author of the forthcoming collection Identifying the Pathogen, forthcoming from Tupelo Press in 2025, The Pact (Tupelo Press/Shearsman Books, 2021), and the memoir Knock Wood, winner of the Dzanc Nonfiction Prize (Dzanc Books, 2019), as well as four previous collections of poetry. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, American Poetry Review, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, and Poetry. She teaches in the MFA program at New England College and can be found at JenniferMilitello.com.