Lit Fest - Lighthouse Writers Workshop 2026

Engaging in play strengthens our linguistic abilities and our capacity to imagine other ways to move through a day (or a life). This workshop will bring people together to play with language as a group and as individuals. We will work to lift ourselves and each other out of ruts worn into our minds. We will pick up strings of words and ask "What would happen if we took this in a different direction?" We will surprise and be surprised in turn.

Through games and other playful writing exercises, you will generate language that you can bring home with you to spark new work. In some cases you may create an entire poem during the workshop itself. The games and exercises are designed to delight and to be shared widely. You can play them later with friends when you (or they) need to connect with a wildness within.

It is probably going to be weird and it is almost certainly going to be fun.

This seminar will begin with an artist talk focused on revision. We’ll look at the (r)evolution of selected poems and lyrical essays from personal archives—from their raw and earnest first attempts into their final forms. We’ll explore the process of research and material collection; intellectual/emotional considerations; and the detachment from initial ideas and embrace of new directions and forms. We’ll also watch a few short videos of other poets discussing their revision processes. We’ll think about the ways that revision opens the doors for our poem’s liberation and freedom. Together, through group discussion and hands-on exercises, we’ll develop our own set of “best practices” for revision.

This is the in-person version of this event. 

This seminar will begin with an artist talk focused on revision. We’ll look at the (r)evolution of selected poems and lyrical essays from personal archives—from their raw and earnest first attempts into their final forms. We’ll explore the process of research and material collection; intellectual/emotional considerations; and the detachment from initial ideas and embrace of new directions and forms. We’ll also watch a few short videos of other poets discussing their revision processes. We’ll think about the ways that revision opens the doors for our poem’s liberation and freedom. Together, through group discussion and hands-on exercises, we’ll develop our own set of  “best practices” for revision.
This is the livestream version of this event.

To the tune of all things protest song and poetry: In this generative workshop, we'll read poems, speeches, essays, and lyrics that offer a lens on liberation and resistance, while highlighting the personal voice and experience. We'll consider the long-held traditions of poetry as a tool for social change and examine our own relationships to that history. Participants will write from prompts and then, depending on time, share some of their writing. Appropriate for all levels of experience.

What happens when a poem takes its shape from an art installation, divination text, or folk calendar entry? In this class, we'll explore how poets borrow forms—structures adapted from non-poetic sources—to create surprising and generative constraints. Through a range of examples, we’ll explore how to identify promising forms in the world around you and adapt them for poem making.

Poems have their own lives and their own minds, it seems. At some point, even with our best intentions, we may encounter resistance from the poem. Or worse, the poem may revolt and fall apart. So perhaps, the poem is like a young adult: It wants to say something and needs the freedom to do so. For this to happen, we as poets must set aside our expectations and predeterminations of what a poem “should be.” Perhaps we need to get out of the way and let the young poem find itself, its shape, its own life. This is to say, we mustn’t be afraid to let the poem try things and fail. We must encourage its curiosity and courage.

In this workshop, we’ll see what happens when we get out of the way and follow the poem’s desires. We’ll set aside our ideas about right and wrong. Instead, we’ll ask, what happens when we completely alter the punctuation? What happens with short lines versus no line breaks at all? What happens when the text sprawls across the page freely or sings from a cozy corner? We will embrace missteps as part of the process, all in pursuit of the question, What does the poem want?

Participants will need a notebook dedicated as a “thinking journal” to write in and, outside of class, a computer and an open mind to listen sensitively and judgment-free to our young poems.

Rhapsody: an expression of ecstasy or uncontrolled emotion. This is not a genre we hear much about in poetry classes, but this workshop invites writers to play in language and sing out their most unbridled feelings. We will look at how sound and image—and even the use of punctuation and the page—can open the poem to articulate what we might otherwise hesitate to express.