Advanced Poetry Workshop: Wyn Cooper

May 15 - 17, 2008
Three-day workshop, afternoons, with evening readings, limited to 8 participants
Tuition: $250
Application Form

This poetry workshop will help students polish their poems for publication. Rather than mutual back-patting, honest criticism will be encouraged. It’s Wyn’s belief that you can’t improve as a poet unless your teacher and your fellow students are honest with you. Each student will submit one or two poems in advance of the workshop. The poems will be read aloud and critiqued during the workshop, with careful attention paid to the following questions: What is the poem trying to do? Is it successful? How can it be improved? New poems will be generated using writing exercises. Finally, Wyn will discuss how and where to send poems for possible publication.

faculty

Wyn Cooper has published three books of poems: The Country of Here Below (Ahsahta Press, 1987), The Way Back (White Pine Press, 2000), and Postcards from the Interior, (BOA Editions, 2005), as well as a chapbook, Secret Address (Chapiteau Press, 2002). His poems, stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, AGNI, and more than 75 other magazines. His poems are included in 25 anthologies of contemporary poetry, including The Mercury Reader,Outsiders, and Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms.

In 1993, “Fun,” a poem from his first book, was turned into Sheryl Crow’s Grammy-winning song “All I Wanna Do.” He has also cowritten songs with David Broza, David Baerwald, and Bill Bottrell. In 2003, Gaff Music released Forty Words for Fear, a cd of songs based on poems and lyrics by Cooper, set to music and sung by the novelist Madison Smartt Bell. It has been featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition and World Café, and has been written about in Esquire and The New York Times Magazine. Their new cd, Postcards Out of the Blue, will be released in late 2007.

He has taught at the University of Utah, Bennington College, Marlboro College, and at The Frost Place, where he now serves on the advisory board. He is a former editor of Quarterly West, and the recipient of a fellowship from the Ucross Foundation. He lives in Halifax, Vermont, and helps run the Brattleboro Literary Festival.