Making Poems of Our Lives: Mining the Memories

This poetry workshop will focus on generating first drafts of at least four memoir poems, if not more. The sessions will include plenty of time for writing, introductions of prompts and sample poems geared to each workshop’s theme. There will be activities to help you delve into your memories, some will be individualized and others will be group exercises to help mine your life experiences for memories that you want to explore more or that you may even have forgotten about…until now. Our first workshop will mine your memories for travel. There are so many ways that you can explore this topic from a first memory of a vacation to rides in cars with siblings to a first trip taken without your parents and so on. Come explore, see where your memories take you. Note: This is a process-oriented class more so than a critique-based class.

About the instructor:
Lylanne Musselman is an award-winning poet, playwright, and visual artist. Her work has appeared in Pank, Flying Island, The Tipton Poetry Journal, The New Verse News, and The Ekphrastic Review, among others, and many anthologies. She is the author of five poetry chapbooks, including Red Mare 16 (Pink House Literary Arts, 2018), a co-author of the volume of poetry, Company of Women New and Selected Poems (Chatter House Press, 2013) and a full-length poetry collection, It’s Not Love, Unfortunately (Chatter House Press, 2018). She has been a Pushcart Prize nominee for her poetry, most recently in 2019. Lylanne lives in Eaton, Indiana with her four cats. You can find out more about her work at https://lylannemusselman.wordpress.com