Looking Again: Moving Through Images: A Poetry Workshop with Shelley Wong

How can we use images in our writing to propel our poems in new directions? Together, we’ll read poems looking for the essence of image-making and how an image can spark a poem, building through repetition, place, and time. Some poems have imagery rich in sensory detail while others use emotional comparison, sonic textures, naming and renaming, and transformation — or assemble evocative images to create a portrait, scene, or narrative. We will discuss poems by Matthew Olzmann, Sharon Olds, Natalie Diaz, and Jennifer Chang, among others, gaining inspiration and insights to draft our own poems.

Shelley Wong is the author of As She Appears (YesYes Books), longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award and winner of the Pamet River Prize. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry,Kenyon Review, and New England Review. She has received a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from MacDowell and Kundiman. She is an affiliate artist at Headlands Center for the Arts and lives in San Francisco.