Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Lisa Low (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. What can a poem hold when it speaks directly to someone, something, or a former self? In this workshop, participants will explore epistolary poems as a way to write through intimacy, distance, memory, and contradiction, and leave with fresh drafts and new ways of thinking about what poems can do. Lisa Low is the author of Replica (University of Wisconsin Press, 2026) and the chapbook Crown for the Girl Inside (YesYes Books, 2023). She is the recipient of a 2023 Pushcart Prize and the 2020 Gulf Coast Nonfiction Prize, and her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Ecotone, The Massachusetts Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. Originally from Maryland, she lives in Chicago.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Joanne Godley (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. Participants will explore how poetry can respond to real events, honor lived experience, and give shape to what must be remembered. Writers will leave with new insight into documentary poetry and fresh material of their own. Joanne Godley is a thrice-nominated Pushcart and Best-of-Net poet, writer, and recent MFA graduate from Pacific University. She is a retired physician and public health specialist, and lives in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Decolonial Passage, The Kenyon Review Online, among others. She is an Anaphora Arts Fellow in poetry and fiction. How the Black Panthers Fell From the Sky, is a memoir-in-verse and Godley’s first poetry collection. It won the Naomi Long Madgett award for 2025 and has just been published by Broadside Lotus Press.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: H. G. Dierdorff (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. Explore how poetry can meet environmental crisis with attention, grief, desire, and care. In this generative workshop, participants will read contemporary ecopoets, question the limits of language, and write new work that reimagines responsibility beyond the self. H. G. Dierdorff is a poet from the scablands and pine savannas of eastern Washington, the ancestral, unceded land of the interior Salish people. She is the author of Rain, Wind, Thunder, Fire, Daughter, which was published by the University of Nevada Press in 2024 and is a finalist for the 2026 Oregon Book Award. Their work has been awarded a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship and appeared in journals such as Cut Bank, The Shore, Arkansas International, and Willow Springs. You can currently find them in Portland, where they teach writing at Clackamas Community College and poetry through Literary Arts.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Kemi Alabi (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. Break from the expected and write toward the marvelous. Through surrealist poems and playful prompts, this generative workshop helps poets tap the unconscious, challenge repression, and unlock bolder, more imaginative work. Kemi Alabi is the author of Against Heaven (Graywolf Press, 2022), selected by Claudia Rankine as winner of the Academy of American Poets First Book Award. The collection was a Kate Tufts Discovery Award finalist, Chicago Review of Books Award winner, and one of New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2022, among other honors. Alabi’s poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, Poetry, Boston Review, the Grammy-nominated album "Difficult Grace," and elsewhere. Alabi is co-editor of The Echoing Ida Collection (Feminist Press, 2021), an anthology of Black reproductive justice writing. They've spent over a decade building narrative power for trans and queer bodily autonomy, most recently as the 2024-2025 Feminist in Residence at Northwestern University. Alabi is currently the inaugural Beloit Poetry Journal Iron Mouth Curatorial Fellow. Born in Wisconsin on a Sunday in July, they now live in Chicago, IL.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Preeti Vangani (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. Explore how food can help you write more vivid, emotionally layered poems of grief, memory, and longing. In this generative workshop, writers will use meals, cooking, and shared rituals to open new pathways into elegy, deepen personal memory, and draft new work in a supportive space. Preeti Vangani is a poet & writer from Bombay based in San Francisco. She is the author of the poetry collections, Mother Tongue Apologize (2019) and Fifty Mothers, (River River Books, 2026). Her work has appeared in AGNI, The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner among other places. Her debut short story won the 2021 Pen/Dau Emerging Writers Prize. Vangani has been a resident at UCross, Djerassi and Ragdale. She has received artist grants from San Francisco Arts Commission, YBCA, and The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She holds an MFA in Writing from University of San Francisco and teaches in the program.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Allisa Cherry (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. Explore the elegy as an ongoing conversation rather than a poem of distance. Through direct address, present tense, and generative prompts, participants will write poems that keep love and loss vividly present on the page. Allisa Cherry is the author of An Exodus of Sparks (Michigan State University Press) and the 2024 recipient of the Wheelbarrow Books poetry prize (RCAH Center for Poetry). Her poetry has appeared recently in journals such as Chicago Quarterly, Mississippi Review and The Penn Review. She currently lives in Oregon where she teaches workshops for immigrants and refugees transitioning to a life in the U.S. and serves as a poetry editor for West Trade Review.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Hadara Bar-Nadav (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. Imagery and Imagination: For the Love of Objects What do your cherished objects reveal? Explore imagery and imagination as we write about the objects that carry memory, meaning, and mystery in our lives. HADARA BAR-NADAV is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, the Lucille Medwick Award from the Poetry Society of America, a fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and other honors. She is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Animal Is Chemical (Four Way Books, 2024), awarded the Levis Prize in Poetry, selected by Jericho Brown. Her other books are The New Nudity (Saturnalia Books, 2017); Lullaby (with Exit Sign) (Saturnalia Books, 2013), awarded the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize; The Frame Called Ruin (New Issues, 2012), Editor’s Selection/Runner Up for the Green Rose Prize; and A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight (Margie/Intuit House, 2007), awarded the Margie Book Prize. She is also the author of two chapbooks, Fountain and Furnace (Tupelo Press, 2015), awarded the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, and Show Me Yours (Laurel Review/Green Tower Press 2010), awarded the Midwest Poets Series Prize.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Allison Adele Hedge Coke (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. Musicality and the Long Poem Let sound guide your pen. In this workshop, explore rhythm, tone, and improvisation to create long-form poems that sing—expanding your sense of structure, continuity, and flow. ALLISON ADELE HEDGE COKE is a Distinguished Professor University of California Riverside (2016–) and teaches for the Department of Creative Writing and the School of Medicine, where she directs the DE In Medical Health and Humanities. Hedge Coke was recently awarded the Thomas Wolfe Prize (& Lecture), UNC/Thomas Wolfe Society, the AWP George Garrett Award and was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters. She served as the 2022 Mellon Dean's Professor at UCR and the 2020 Dan & Maggie Inouye Chair in Democratic Ideals at the University of Hawai’i Mānoa, and was a Fulbright Scholar in Montenegro (2019). She formerly held the Paul & Clarice Reynolds Chair (University of Nebraska 2007-2012) and taught for the University of Nebraska MFA Program from 2007-2016, was a Visiting Distinguished Writer (University of Hawai’i Mānoa, 2014-15), an NEH Visiting Distinguished Chair (Hartwick College 2004), and was a Visiting Artist-Writer (University of Central Oklahoma 2012-2014).
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: m. mick powell (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. Writing About the Dead and the Dying This workshop invites writers to consider how we grieve, honor, and remember, and how we celebrate life and legacy even as violence shapes our world. M. MICK POWELL is a queer Black Cabo Verdean femme, poet, artist, Aries, and the author of DEAD GIRL CAMEO (One World Books, 2025) and the chapbook threesome in the last Toyota Celica & other circus tricks, winner of the 2023 Host Publications Chapbook Prize. An assistant professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Connecticut, mick enjoys chasing waterfalls and being in love.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Alison Lubar (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. Although one of the most famous writers of the sonnet was Shakespeare, the form has existed since the 13th century. In this history-meets-poetry workshop, participants will explore classic and contemporary sonnets, from poets like Petrarch, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Terrance Hayes, and Nicole Tallman. We’ll look at the way that poets use the sonnet form to address the issues of their time and how this “little song” has evolved over its long existence. Participants will walk away with a broad understanding of the Sonnet, the way its conventions both draw on and continually inspire other forms of poetry, and ways to try writing their own “little songs.” Alison Lubar is a queer biracial Nikkei poet and educator who teaches literature to teenagers, writing to adults, and yoga to all ages. They’re the author of two full-length poetry books, The Other Tree, winner of Harbor Editions’ 2023 Laureate Prize, and METAMOURPHOSIS (fifth wheel press, 2024), four chapbooks, Philosophers Know Nothing About Love (Thirty West, 2022), queer feast (Bottlecap Press, 2022), sweet euphemism (Mouthfeel Press, 2023), and It Skips a Generation (Stanchion, 2023), and a forthcoming microchap, American Kintsugi (Bull City Press, 2026). Alison is also a board member for Philadelphia’s Blue Stoop.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Aly Acevedo (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. Desire is one of the oldest subjects of human art, not just romantic desire but the deep longing to be seen, understood, and connected. In this workshop, we’ll explore how poetry gives voice to that yearning and how language becomes a bridge between isolation and intimacy. Through discussion and guided writing, participants will consider what it means to reach for another person, to be known, and to find meaning through connection. Aly Acevedo is a Puerto Rican and Vietnamese poet, educator and speaker living in the Kansas City area. Her debut collection, My Dear Cult Leader (Button Poetry, 2026), examines the long shadows of a toxic relationship and the aftermath of sexual assault, weaving personal history with persona poems that explore power, trauma and reclamation. Her writing has been featured in Frontier Poetry, TRASH MAG, Ink and Marrow, Anti-Heroin Chic and elsewhere. She lives with her husband, two cats and dog.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Tatiana Johnson-Boria (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. How can we truly unearth the depths and sensations at the core of our memories to generate new poems? How can we talk about the unspeakable or the things that we have not quite been able to write into? This workshop will focus on working with writers to find different ways of excavating the self and leaning into the work that can come through this experience. We'll also explore work by writers like Joy Harjo, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Porsha Olaywiola, and others. Tatiana Johnson-Boria (she/her) is the author of Nocturne in Joy (2023), winner of the 2024 Julia Ward Howe Book Prize in Poetry. As an educator, artist, facilitator, and mother; she uses her writing practice to dismantle racism, reckon with trauma, cultivate healing, and to explore the complex magic of mothering. She has received fellowships and awards from Tin House, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, MacDowell, the Brother Thomas Fellowship, and St. Botolph Club Foundation, among others. Tatiana is a 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee, teaches at GrubStreet, and has been on faculty at Emerson College, among other institutions. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Academy of American Poets, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review Online, and more. She is represented by Lauren Scovel at Laura Gross Literary.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Todd Robinson (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. "To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life." —Czeslaw Milosz With Milosz’s immortal wisdom as our lodestar, we will take a tour through autobiographical poems ancient and modern, studying the ways personal poems capture self and other, place and purpose, sound and sense, framing the self as both mirror and window, at once magnificent and minute. Todd Robinson affectionately known to acolytes as "Toddfather," is a poet and educator based in Omaha. He is the author of Mass for Shut-Ins (Backwaters Press, 2018) and Note at Heart Rock (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2012). His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in such epic venues as Prairie Schooner, Flyway—Journal of Writing and Environment, Kestrel, North American Review, Sugar House Review, Cortland Review, Natural Bridge, Superstition Review, Weber: The Contemporary West, Chiron Review, A Dozen Nothing, and many others. Recipient of the 2011-2012 Thompson Learning Community’s Outstanding Faculty Award, he has conducted writing workshops with The Seven Doctors Project, The Naturalist School, Nebraska Warrior Writers, Nebraska Writers Collective, and the CÚRAM center for research in medical devices. He is founder and host of the Kaneko Art Museum’s Bibliophilia reading series, which is currently on a long pandemic pause. He earned a B.A. and M.A. from Creighton University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He serves as vice president on the board of directors of Big Feels Lab.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Courtney LeBlanc (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. How can pop culture provide new and inventive ways to write poems, present complex truths, and provide an avenue into our deepest emotions? In this generative workshop, poet Courtney LeBlanc will provide examples that effectively, and creatively, weave pop culture into their poems. How does an American Girl doll represent your childhood? How does Nirvana or Taylor Swift inspire you? How does your favorite horror movie reflect your own truth or trauma? We'll read poems together, discuss them, and then Courtney will provide prompts to write your own pop culture-inspired poems. Courtney LeBlanc is the author of the full-length collections Her Dark Everything; Her Whole Bright Life (winner of the Jack McCarthy Book Prize); Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart; and Beautiful & Full of Monsters. She is the Arlington County Poet Laureate and the founder and editor-in-chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press. She is also the founder of the Poetry Coven, a monthly generative poetry workshop. She loves nail polish, tattoos, and a soy latte each morning.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Melissa Fite Johnson (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. In this workshop we’ll discuss how often poetry is perceived as something very serious—unsmiling writers wearing black and spouting purposefully obscure references. And while poetry is certainly sometimes that (or a version of that), it absolutely doesn’t have to be. There’s so much room for playfulness and joy and humor in poetry—and those qualities don’t mean the poems themselves are necessarily light or light-hearted. Humor can happen for many reasons, one of which is that it can help make traumatic topics more palatable and accessible. Of course, another reason to write with humor is just to give others something to read that moves them to tears of laughter rather than tears of despair, and now more than ever that is as noble and necessary a purpose as any. Together we’ll read terrific humorous poems by writers like Erin Adair-Hodges, Chen Chen, and Luisa Muradyan—and then we’ll write and share our own. Melissa Fite Johnson is the author of three full-length collections, most recently Midlife Abecedarian (Riot in Your Throat, 2024). Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Pleiades, HAD, Whale Road Review, SWWIM, and elsewhere. Melissa teaches high school English in Lawrence, KS, where she and her husband live with their dogs.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Brad Modlin (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. A quiet painting of farmers except a tiny man falls from the sky. A poem with a commercial break. The childhood memory that lands on your head on your grocery store run. Some art insists the out of place actually belongs—as if it's meant to be. We'll explore such art, fill some pages, and build some creative bridges that may freshen our perspectives on the things we make and the days we live. Bred MOdlin is The Paul and Clarice Reynolds Endowed Chair of Creative Writing and an associate professor. His book, Everyone at This Party Has Two Names won the Cowles Poetry Prize. His Surviving in Drought (fiction stories) won the Cupboard Contest. His poetry has been the basis for orchestral scores, a Brooklyn art exhibition, and numerous speeches, reflections, meditations, and podcasts. His poetry is featured in an episode of The Slowdown with U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón (American Public Media & The Poetry Foundation) and the premier episode of Poetry Unbound with Pádraig Ó Tuama (On Being Studios). He has been invited to read at the American School of Paris, been commissioned for poetry by the art gallery of the University of Melbourne (Australia), and given the keynote at Philsophique Poetica’s World Poetry Conference in India. He coordinates the Reynolds Visiting Writers Series, bringing writers from across the nation to share with us. On the other side of the equation, he happily gives readings as the guest of other universities, recently including University of Southern California, Los Angeles; Monroe Community College in New York; Western Kentucky University; and Northern Arizona University. He likes laughing with his students.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Abby E. Murray (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. Participants in this workshop will consider several poems born in times of struggle to carry clarity and the doggedness of hope. We’ll explore the poetry of political upheaval and war, as well as familial and personal grief; in doing so, we’ll rediscover the techniques good listeners and writers have used for centuries to create poems that help us persevere. Prompts generated by the work at hand will get us writing, and poets will leave with drafts to carry onward through the dark. Abby E. Murray (they/them) is the editor of Collateral, a literary journal concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone. Their first book, Hail and Farewell, won the Perugia Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award; their second book, Recovery Commands, recently won the Richard-Gabriel Rummonds Poetry Prize and will be published by Ex Ophidia Press in 2025. Abby served as the 2019-2021 poet laureate for the city of Tacoma, Washington, and currently teaches rhetoric in military strategy to Army War College fellows at the University of Washington. Their poems can be found in recent or forthcoming issues of One Art, the Pushcart Prize 2025 Anthology, Rattle: Poets Respond, and Birdbrains: A Lyrical Guide to the Birds of Washington State.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Maria Zoccola (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. This generative workshop will explore the enduring influence of mythology, examining how ancient stories continue to shape our understanding of identity, power, beauty, and human nature. We’ll begin by looking at how classical myth informs contemporary poetry, starting with Helen of Troy, 1993, and expanding into works by poets like Rita Dove and Alice Oswald, who reimagine myth through ancient and modern lenses. These texts will serve as a springboard for discussing how myth lives within literature, poetry, and art. Participants will then receive creative prompts to write their own myth-inspired poems, whether drawing from ancient sources or reinventing archetypes to reflect today’s world. No prior knowledge of mythology is required—just curiosity and a love for creating stories with poetry. Maria Zoccola is a poet and educator from Memphis, Tennessee. She has writing degrees from Emory University and Falmouth University, and has spent many years leading creative writing workshops for middle and high school youth. Maria’s work has previously appeared in The Atlantic, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, The Sewanee Review, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere, and has received a special mention for the Pushcart Prize. Her debut poetry collection, Helen of Troy, 1993 (Scribner, 2025), earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice pick.
Award-winning poet, author, and lyricist Rayma Ramana will present an online workshop focusing on the intersection of healing and poetry for teens age 13 and up. The workshop is free, but registration is required. Click here to register. This event is part of the Nebraska Writers Collective Visiting Writer Series. Rayma Ramana is an award-winning American author, poet and lyricist. She was born, raised and currently resides in New York. Ramana won the NY Knicks Poetry Slam, which awarded her a full-tuition scholarship to St. John’s University. Soon after, she became the Youth Poet Laureate of NYC. She has since performed at events such as the US Open, Tribeca Film Festival, TV One’s Verses and Flow, Pharrell’s Adidas campaign, SONY TV’s Asian Women in the Arts Awards, the Immigrant Gala, the Grand Slam Finals at the Apollo Theater, Celebrate Brooklyn!, the Source magazine's SOURCE360 Festival and many more. Her work can be found on the Poetry Foundation and Academy of American Poets websites and in Seventh Wave and the Southampton Review. Ramana published her first collection of poems through Penmanship Books, with a release at Lincoln Center. In addition to performing and writing, she has also worked as an educator and mentor for young poets and young women. She recently received her MFA in creative writing from the New School. Ramana’s current endeavors include running a blog through Medium and working as a librettist for an operetta film. Her hope is to remain a student of wonder and to explore truth sincerely through her work and her life.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Matt Mason (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. Some songs have a magical way of transporting us through time. They evoke vivid memories, stirring up feelings of nostalgia, joy, or reflection. In this workshop, we’ll explore the songs that have shaped us and look at how music can serve as a powerful gateway to poetry. We’ll look at the songs that connect us to our past, reliving moments of youth while discovering fresh insights in the present. Then, we’ll discuss how to transform these emotional snapshots into poems. Whether you’re a seasoned poet or a newcomer to writing, this workshop invites you to turn the soundtrack of your life into art. MATT MASON is the former Nebraska State Poet and was the Executive Director of the Nebraska Writers Collective from 2009-2022. Through the US State Department, he has run workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus. Mason is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Nebraska Arts Council. His work can be found in The New York Times, on NPR’s Morning Edition, in American Life in Poetry, and more. Mason's 5th book, Rock Stars, was released by Button Poetry in 2023.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Kiara Nicole Letcher (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. Writing from out of the ordinary in an exploration in peculiar poetry. In this workshop, we will look at poems that deal with the supernatural — poems that peer beyond the veil and utilize a supernatural element. From Poe, Keats, Lorca, and Rossetti, among others, we will explore these poems and what they say about the seen and unseen world. Through these works, we’ll consider how the supernatural in poetry reflects deep-seated human questions about mortality, reality, and the limits of human understanding. By reading and discussing these pieces, participants will engage with how different eras and cultures have expressed universal themes of fear, mystery, and fascination with the unknown. Participants will have the opportunity to ruminate and investigate poems of the paranormal, gaining insights into how these eerie elements serve as a window into humanity's beliefs and values. They will also craft their own poems with a twist of the eerie, adding to a long-standing tradition of poetic exploration that bridges the tangible and intangible aspects of human experience. KIARA NICOLE LETCHER is the author of Oxblood, (Agape Editions, 2024) and the chapbook Scream Queen (Orchard Street Press, 2019). Her work has appeared in South Dakota Review, Green Mountains Review, Plainsongs Magazine, Solstice Literary Magazine, Querencia Press and Mulberry Literary, among other publications. Her work is also forthcoming in Laurel Review. She received her MFA from The University of Nebraska at Omaha and previously served as a Board Member for the Nebraska Writer’s Collective. She was the 2024 Keynote Speaker for the Nebraska Scholastic Writing Awards and a Nebraska State Poet Nominee.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Raena Shirali (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. In an era defined by turmoil, poetry of witness is newly defined by resistance. Although anger is culturally maligned as immature, reactionary, hysterical, and easily dismissed by the structures that be, what connects us to seemingly insurmountable forces of oppression is our fury in the face of indignity. In this workshop, participants will work in the lineage of poetry of witness, considering the evolution and contemporary iteration of the response poem. Together, we will work with, not through, righteous indignation at the state of the world. This is not fine. Let’s whine about it. RAENA SHIRALI is the author of two collections of poetry. Her first book, GILT, was released by YesYes Books in 2017 and won the 2018 Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award. Published by Black Lawrence Press in October 2022, her second book, summonings, won the 2021 Hudson Prize and was shortlisted for the 2022 Julie Suk Award. Winner of a Pushcart Prize & a former Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University, Shirali is also the recipient of prizes and honors from VIDA, Gulf Coast, Boston Review, & Cosmonauts Avenue. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A Day, The Nation, The Rumpus, & elsewhere. Formerly Co-Editor-in-Chief of Muzzle Magazine, Shirali now serves as Faculty Advisor for Folio—a literary magazine dedicated to publishing works by undergraduate students at the national level. She holds an MFA in Poetry from The Ohio State University and is an Associate Professor of English at Holy Family University.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Anastacia Reneé (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. Memory (the deliberate act of remembering) is a form of willed creation. It is not an effort to find out the way it really was--that is research. The point is to dwell on the way it appeared and why it appeared in that particular way. -Toni Morrison In this genre-bending workshop we will collectively and independently explore and interrogate stories, communal folklore and our archival of memories. We will lay our memories (from multiple points of view) out and jigsaw them to create first drafts of The Haibun, and The Nines poems. All class text will be provided by workshop facilitator. ANASTACIA RENEÉ is a queer writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, playwright, former radio host, TEDX speaker, and podcaster. She is the author of Here In The (Middle) Of Nowhere, Side Notes From The Archivist, (v.) and Forget It. Sidenotes from the Archivist was selected as one of “NYPL Best Books of 2023,” and, The American Library Associations (RUSA) “Notable Books of 2024.” She is a recipient of the James W. Ray Distinguished Artist Award (Literary) and she was selected by NBC News as part of the list of "Queer Artist of Color Dominate 2021's Must See LGBTQ Art Shows," for (Don’t Be Absurd) Alice in Parts, an installation at Frye Art Museum. Renee served as Seattle Civic Poet (2017-1019) during Seattle’s inaugural year of UNESCO status. Renee has been, Hugo House Poet-in-Residence, and Jack Straw Curator. Their work has been published widely.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: MK Chavez (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. This workshop will explore how hybrid poetry serves as a powerful tool for self-exploration and expression. By engaging with the fluid and transformative nature of hybrid forms, we’ll delve into how our identities, shaped by the intersections of various influences, can be authentically reflected in our writing. We will examine how hybrid poems, which blend elements of narrative, memoir, and cultural commentary, allow us to navigate the complexities of our inner and outer worlds. Participants will have the opportunity to create works that capture the richness of their experiences, exploring themes of identity, place, and the self in all its dimensions. This workshop invites writers to move beyond traditional forms, using hybrid poetry as a way to express the multifaceted nature of their authentic selves. Whether you’re experienced in poetry or new to this form, this workshop will provide a supportive space to explore the connections between our lived experiences and our creative expressions. MK CHAVEZ is a writer and educator whose work explores mixed-race identity, social justice, environmental resilience, horror cinema, magic, ritual, and the creative process. As founder of the Ouroboros Writing Lab, MK Chavez provides a nurturing space for writers to grow. The Lab offers workshops designed to expand creative boundaries and individual and group creative coaching. Chavez’s work is recognized with the Pen Josephine Miles Award, San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award, and the Ruth Weiss Maverick Award. Chavez’s publications include Dear Animal, Mothermorphosis, the lyric essay chapbook A Brief History of the Selfie, and Virgin Eyes. Recent work can be found as part of the art installation Manifest Differently.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Jessica Poli (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. How do the landscapes we've lived in shape the way we think, feel, and create? In Crossing Open Ground, Barry Lopez suggests that “the shape of the individual mind is affected by land as it is by genes.” There is a profound connection between our inner lives and the physical spaces we inhabit. In this generative workshop, we will consider the ways the physical world influences our interior landscapes, and how those interior landscapes, in turn, might shape our poems. Through guided prompts, reflective discussion, and close readings of place-inspired poems, you’ll learn to translate your experiences of land — whether wide-open spaces, urban corners, or intimate settings — into vivid, textured poetry. JESSICA POLI is the author of Red Ocher (University of Arkansas Press), which was a finalist for the 2023 Miller Williams Prize. Her work has appeared in Best New Poets, North American Review, Poet Lore, and Salamander, among other places. She is currently a PhD student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she is an Associate Editor for Prairie Schooner.
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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Julia Guez (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. December 14, Julia Guez "Mapping Our Poems" In "The Archaeology of Knowledge," Michel Foucault writes, “The frontiers of a book are never clear-cut: beyond the title, the first lines, and the last full stop, beyond its internal configuration and its autonomous forms, it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network.” In this generative writing class, we will begin with a word or phrase, line or lines from another book of poetry. After mapping out ideas, feelings, rhythms, syntaxes and words we associate with the line or lines we have brought in, we will start work on our own poems. (Throughout, we will engage in mini-breaks that can be incorporated into people’s everyday writing rituals in the future, to spur our creativity and collaboration as a workshop). The lines we begin with may be embedded in the poem we write, or turn out to serve as the seed, scaffold or prompt. The process of building a poem in conversation with other poets and poetry, is one that will hopefully prove to be a rewarding approach for you to take in your writing practice moving forward. JULIA GUEZ is a writer and translator based in the city of Houston. "The Certain Body" (Four Way Books, 2022) is her second collection of poetry, written while she was recovering from COVID in the spring of 2020. Guez holds degrees from Rice and Columbia.
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“The Stories We Share” Poetry Workshops (Read More)
Behind every social injustice story lies the possibility for change. In an era of media over-saturation, divisiveness, and declining humaneness, a well-told story has the power to inspire and induce action. But how do we write such testimonies? How do we activate a jaded public? Free poetry workshops at the Samuel Bak Museum and Learning Center will help to address these questions. After a tour of the Museum’s current exhibition Flight & Hope, participants will discuss the themes presented and explore how they would present their own experiences of trauma, displacement, hope, and/or survival. Registration for these workshops is required, and spots are limited. For more information, and to register, visit https://events.unomaha.edu/event/stores_we_share Nov. 9, 5:30 p.m. Dr. Todd Robinson will focus on elegy and survival. Nov. 16, 5:30 p.m. Ms. Sharmila Seyyid will focus on writing and reading for recovery. The poetry workshop session on Nov. 30 with Dr. Lisa Fay Coutley will focus on trauma and healing in the context of domestic violence and is by invitation only through the WCA and UNO Gender and Sexuality Resource Center. If you have any questions or would like to sign up for the event, please contact SBMLC at unobakinfo@unomaha.edu. . November 30 at 5:30 PM (limited to 20 participants).
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Nebraska Poetry Society Poetry Workshops (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops occurring on June 10, July 15, August 26, September 23, October 21. November 4, and December 2. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. Afterwards participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: June 10, Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet "I Stop Somewhere Waiting for You" July 15, Adrienne Christian "Writing the Elegant Sex Poem" August 26, Meghan Sterling "Submerged in the Sublime" September 23, Matt Mason "Let's Just Write a Sestina" October 21, Kathryn Winograd "Discovering the Kintsugi" November 4, Kelly Weber "Tongues in a Greening Field" December 2, Freesia McKee "Tethering Poems to Place" Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.
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Website: City:
Nebraska Poetry Society Poetry Workshops (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops occurring on June 10, July 15, August 26, September 23, October 21. November 4, and December 2. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. Afterwards participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: June 10, Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet "I Stop Somewhere Waiting for You" July 15, Adrienne Christian "Writing the Elegant Sex Poem" August 26, Meghan Sterling "Submerged in the Sublime" September 23, Matt Mason "Let's Just Write a Sestina" October 21, Kathryn Winograd "Discovering the Kintsugi" November 4, Kelly Weber "Tongues in a Greening Field" December 2, Freesia McKee "Tethering Poems to Place" Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.
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Website: City:
Nebraska Poetry Society Poetry Workshops (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops occurring on June 10, July 15, August 26, September 23, October 21. November 4, and December 2. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. Afterwards participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: June 10, Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet "I Stop Somewhere Waiting for You" July 15, Adrienne Christian "Writing the Elegant Sex Poem" August 26, Meghan Sterling "Submerged in the Sublime" September 23, Matt Mason "Let's Just Write a Sestina" October 21, Kathryn Winograd "Discovering the Kintsugi" November 4, Kelly Weber "Tongues in a Greening Field" December 2, Freesia McKee "Tethering Poems to Place" Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.
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Website: City:
Nebraska Poetry Society Poetry Workshops (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops occurring on June 10, July 15, August 26, September 23, October 21. November 4, and December 2. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. Afterwards participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: June 10, Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet "I Stop Somewhere Waiting for You" July 15, Adrienne Christian "Writing the Elegant Sex Poem" August 26, Meghan Sterling "Submerged in the Sublime" September 23, Matt Mason "Let's Just Write a Sestina" October 21, Kathryn Winograd "Discovering the Kintsugi" November 4, Kelly Weber "Tongues in a Greening Field" December 2, Freesia McKee "Tethering Poems to Place" Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.
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Website: City:
Nebraska Poetry Society Poetry Workshops (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops occurring on June 10, July 15, August 26, September 23, October 21. November 4, and December 2. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. Afterwards participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: June 10, Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet "I Stop Somewhere Waiting for You" July 15, Adrienne Christian "Writing the Elegant Sex Poem" August 26, Meghan Sterling "Submerged in the Sublime" September 23, Matt Mason "Let's Just Write a Sestina" October 21, Kathryn Winograd "Discovering the Kintsugi" November 4, Kelly Weber "Tongues in a Greening Field" December 2, Freesia McKee "Tethering Poems to Place" Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.
Contact Information
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Website: City:
Nebraska Poetry Society Poetry Workshops (Read More)
The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops occurring on June 10, July 15, August 26, September 23, October 21. November 4, and December 2. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. Afterwards participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: June 10, Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet "I Stop Somewhere Waiting for You" July 15, Adrienne Christian "Writing the Elegant Sex Poem" August 26, Meghan Sterling "Submerged in the Sublime" September 23, Matt Mason "Let's Just Write a Sestina" October 21, Kathryn Winograd "Discovering the Kintsugi" November 4, Kelly Weber "Tongues in a Greening Field" December 2, Freesia McKee "Tethering Poems to Place" Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.
The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer five monthly online poetry workshops occurring on August 20, September 10, October 1, November 12, and December 3. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. After participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: Aug. 20, Gauri Awasthi “Ecopoetics and The Poet" Sept. 10, Rosebud Ben-Oni “Elegy as Epiphany: How Grief Leads to Illumination” Oct. 1, Torrin A Greathouse “Writing the Unreliable Speaker” Nov. 12, Kathryn Winograd “Chapbook Explorations into Culture, Gender & Identity” Dec. 3, Becca Klaver “Strange & Sublime Similes” Registration required. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.
The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer five monthly online poetry workshops occurring on August 20, September 10, October 1, November 12, and December 3. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. After participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: Aug. 20, Gauri Awasthi “Ecopoetics and The Poet" Sept. 10, Rosebud Ben-Oni “Elegy as Epiphany: How Grief Leads to Illumination” Oct. 1, Torrin A Greathouse “Writing the Unreliable Speaker” Nov. 12, Kathryn Winograd “Chapbook Explorations into Culture, Gender & Identity” Dec. 3, Becca Klaver “Strange & Sublime Similes” Registration required. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.
The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer five monthly online poetry workshops occurring on August 20, September 10, October 1, November 12, and December 3. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. After participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: Aug. 20, Gauri Awasthi “Ecopoetics and The Poet" Sept. 10, Rosebud Ben-Oni “Elegy as Epiphany: How Grief Leads to Illumination” Oct. 1, Torrin A Greathouse “Writing the Unreliable Speaker” Nov. 12, Kathryn Winograd “Chapbook Explorations into Culture, Gender & Identity” Dec. 3, Becca Klaver “Strange & Sublime Similes” Registration required. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.
The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer five monthly online poetry workshops occurring on August 20, September 10, October 1, November 12, and December 3. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. After participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: Aug. 20, Gauri Awasthi “Ecopoetics and The Poet" Sept. 10, Rosebud Ben-Oni “Elegy as Epiphany: How Grief Leads to Illumination” Oct. 1, Torrin A Greathouse “Writing the Unreliable Speaker” Nov. 12, Kathryn Winograd “Chapbook Explorations into Culture, Gender & Identity” Dec. 3, Becca Klaver “Strange & Sublime Similes” Registration required. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.
The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer five monthly online poetry workshops occurring on March 12, April 9, May 14, June 18 and July 9. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. After participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: March 12 -- Dr. Raina Leon: "Back In the Day": The Element(ary) of the Body April 9 -- Dr. Maria Nazos: Sorry, Not Sorry: Curses, Confessions, & Apologies for Things You're Secretly Glad You Did May 14 -- Matt Mason: Metaphor & Simile are Like, Ummm, the Batteries that Make a Poem (or any description) Run June 18 -- Kim Noriega: The Well Turned Poem July 9 -- Holly Lyn Walrath: Journaling for Poets Registration required. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.
The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer five monthly online poetry workshops occurring on March 12, April 9, May 14, June 18 and July 9. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. After participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: March 12 -- Dr. Raina Leon: "Back In the Day": The Element(ary) of the Body April 9 -- Dr. Maria Nazos: Sorry, Not Sorry: Curses, Confessions, & Apologies for Things You're Secretly Glad You Did May 14 -- Matt Mason: Metaphor & Simile are Like, Ummm, the Batteries that Make a Poem (or any description) Run June 18 -- Kim Noriega: The Well Turned Poem July 9 -- Holly Lyn Walrath: Journaling for Poets Registration required. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.
