Loading…
Type: Poetry clear filter
Friday, June 12
 

9:00am MDT

Intense Emotions, Subtle Words
Friday June 12, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Poetry is the native tongue of passionate intensity. Yet how much is ‘too much’ when it comes to expressing enormous, complicated emotions? We can use various literary devices to create poetic restraint and redirection. We'll discuss works from contemporary poets Ada Limón, Sherman Alexie, Kim Addonizio, and others, as well as write our own intense—yet subtle—poems.
Speakers
avatar for Joy Roulier Sawyer

Joy Roulier Sawyer

Faculty
Joy Roulier Sawyer holds an MA from New York University, where she received the Herbert Rubin Award for Outstanding Creative Writing. The author of several nonfiction books, she's also published two poetry collections, Tongues of Men and Angels (White Violet Press), and Lifeguards... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry

1:30pm MDT

How to Tell Time: Narrative in Poetry
Friday June 12, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
While poetry doesn’t require narrative, readers are often searching for it. In this course, we will discuss time and movement in poetry, and the many tools that help us to “drive” a poem and determine what kind of time we are telling. Through reading, discussion, and generative prompts, we will explore image, sound, rhythm, meter, juxtaposition, form, and to deepen our understanding of measuring, telling, and thinking about time in poems. We will read excerpts from Gwendolyn Brooks, Chen Chen, Mathias Svalina, and more.
Speakers
avatar for Suzi Q Smith

Suzi Q Smith

Faculty
Suzi Q. Smith is an award-winning artist, organizer, and educator who lives in Denver, Colorado. She has created, curated, coached, and taught in Denver for over 20 years, managing the largest poetry festivals that Denver has seen to date. A TEDx speaker multiple times, Suzi has performed... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry

4:00pm MDT

Contemporary American Women Poets 2026
Friday June 12, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Many living, breathing American women poets have written spectacular books in the last two years. Now in its seventh Lit Fest iteration, in preparation for this class I will sample nearly four dozen poetry collections from large and small presses. Danusha Lameris, Tara Stringfellow, Han Vanderhart and Diane Seuss are in the running, plus a long list of new poets to come. Continuing a tradition, we will explore the work of Linda Pastan as foremother. All are welcome.
Speakers
avatar for Lynn Wagner

Lynn Wagner

Faculty
Lynn Wagner is the author of No Blues This Raucous Song, which won the Slapering Hol Chapbook competition. She received an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh, where she won the Academy of American Poets prize. She has earned fellowships to the Virginia Center of the Creative Arts... Read More →
Friday June 12, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry
 
Saturday, June 13
 

8:30am MDT

Advanced Weekend Hybrid Workshop: Games Writers Play with Heather Christle
Saturday June 13, 2026 8:30am - 12:00pm MDT
TBA
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.
Speakers
avatar for Heather Christle

Heather Christle

Visiting Author
Heather Christle is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Paper Crown. She has also published two works of nonfiction: In the Rhododendrons: A Memoir with Appearances by Virginia Woolf and The Crying Book. Her work has appeared in London Review of Books, The Nation... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 8:30am - 12:00pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry, Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

Revision is the Doorway to a Poem's (R)evolution
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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. 
Speakers
avatar for Layli Long Soldier

Layli Long Soldier

Visiting Author
Layli Long Soldier is author of the collection Whereas (Graywolf Press, 2017), which won the National Books Critics Circle award, the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her poems and critical work have appeared in POETRY Magazine, The New... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry

9:00am MDT

Revision is the Doorway to a Poem's (R)evolution (Livestream)
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Virtual
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.
Speakers
avatar for Layli Long Soldier

Layli Long Soldier

Visiting Author
Layli Long Soldier is author of the collection Whereas (Graywolf Press, 2017), which won the National Books Critics Circle award, the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her poems and critical work have appeared in POETRY Magazine, The New... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Virtual
  Poetry

9:00am MDT

Two-Day Intensive: The Personal. The Political. The Poetic.
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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.
Speakers
avatar for Suzi Q Smith

Suzi Q Smith

Faculty
Suzi Q. Smith is an award-winning artist, organizer, and educator who lives in Denver, Colorado. She has created, curated, coached, and taught in Denver for over 20 years, managing the largest poetry festivals that Denver has seen to date. A TEDx speaker multiple times, Suzi has performed... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry, Multi-Genre

1:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Borrowed Structures—Finding Poetic Form in Unexpected Places
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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.
Speakers
avatar for Radha Marcum

Radha Marcum

Faculty
Radha Marcum, MFA, won the 2023 Washington Prize for her forthcoming collection, Pine Soot Tendon Bone (2024). She was also awarded the New Mexico Book Award in 2018 for her first collection of poems, Bloodline (3: A Taos Press), about her grandfather's work building the first atomic... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry

1:30pm MDT

Advanced Weekend Poetry Workshop: Freedom Before the Revolt with Layli Long Soldier
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:30pm - 5:00pm MDT
TBA
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.
Speakers
avatar for Layli Long Soldier

Layli Long Soldier

Visiting Author
Layli Long Soldier is author of the collection Whereas (Graywolf Press, 2017), which won the National Books Critics Circle award, the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her poems and critical work have appeared in POETRY Magazine, The New... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 1:30pm - 5:00pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry

4:00pm MDT

Rhapsody (V)
Saturday June 13, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
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.
Speakers
avatar for Elizabeth Robinson

Elizabeth Robinson

Faculty
Elizabeth Robinson is the author of over a dozen volumes of poetry. Her most recent books are Three Novels (Omnidawn), Counterpart (Ahsahta), and Blue Heron (Center for Literary Publishing). Robinson’s mixed genre meditation, On Ghosts (Solid Objects), was a finalist for the Los... Read More →
Saturday June 13, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
  Poetry
 
Sunday, June 14
 

8:30am MDT

Advanced Weekend Hybrid Workshop: Games Writers Play with Heather Christle
Sunday June 14, 2026 8:30am - 12:00pm MDT
TBA
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.
Speakers
avatar for Heather Christle

Heather Christle

Visiting Author
Heather Christle is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Paper Crown. She has also published two works of nonfiction: In the Rhododendrons: A Memoir with Appearances by Virginia Woolf and The Crying Book. Her work has appeared in London Review of Books, The Nation... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 8:30am - 12:00pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry, Nonfiction/Memoir

9:00am MDT

Re/vision: Nurture Your Inner Poetry Editor
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Revision is where mediocre poems become excellent ones—but how do you know what to change? This practical class offers concrete strategies for seeing your work with fresh eyes and revising with purpose. We'll cover five techniques for gaining critical distance from your drafts and five actionable revision approaches for poems that haven't yet reached their potential. You'll also learn how to interpret and implement workshop feedback effectively, turning even vague or contradictory responses into productive next steps for your poems.
Speakers
avatar for Radha Marcum

Radha Marcum

Faculty
Radha Marcum, MFA, won the 2023 Washington Prize for her forthcoming collection, Pine Soot Tendon Bone (2024). She was also awarded the New Mexico Book Award in 2018 for her first collection of poems, Bloodline (3: A Taos Press), about her grandfather's work building the first atomic... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 11:00am MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry

9:00am MDT

Two-Day Intensive: The Personal. The Political. The Poetic.
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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.
Speakers
avatar for Suzi Q Smith

Suzi Q Smith

Faculty
Suzi Q. Smith is an award-winning artist, organizer, and educator who lives in Denver, Colorado. She has created, curated, coached, and taught in Denver for over 20 years, managing the largest poetry festivals that Denver has seen to date. A TEDx speaker multiple times, Suzi has performed... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry, Multi-Genre

1:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Borrowed Structures—Finding Poetic Form in Unexpected Places
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
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.
Speakers
avatar for Radha Marcum

Radha Marcum

Faculty
Radha Marcum, MFA, won the 2023 Washington Prize for her forthcoming collection, Pine Soot Tendon Bone (2024). She was also awarded the New Mexico Book Award in 2018 for her first collection of poems, Bloodline (3: A Taos Press), about her grandfather's work building the first atomic... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry

1:30pm MDT

Are Words Alive?
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
This craft talk will focus on strategies for collaborating with words as living beings. How do we make ourselves available to their arrival? How do we treat them when we meet? What do they desire? What do they hate? We'll look to possible clues from poets, writers, and critics who knew language before us, as well as theories nabbed from neuroscience and predictive coding. We may not answer all our questions, but we’ll marvel at the sensations (and writings) they can produce.
Speakers
avatar for Heather Christle

Heather Christle

Visiting Author
Heather Christle is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Paper Crown. She has also published two works of nonfiction: In the Rhododendrons: A Memoir with Appearances by Virginia Woolf and The Crying Book. Her work has appeared in London Review of Books, The Nation... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry, Nonfiction/Memoir

1:30pm MDT

Advanced Weekend Poetry Workshop: Freedom Before the Revolt with Layli Long Soldier
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 5:00pm MDT
TBA
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.
Speakers
avatar for Layli Long Soldier

Layli Long Soldier

Visiting Author
Layli Long Soldier is author of the collection Whereas (Graywolf Press, 2017), which won the National Books Critics Circle award, the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her poems and critical work have appeared in POETRY Magazine, The New... Read More →
Sunday June 14, 2026 1:30pm - 5:00pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry
 
Monday, June 15
 

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Poetry Workshop: Draft Exclusion with Paul Muldoon
Monday June 15, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA
The popular image of the poet is as a dasher off of poem drafts. So manic and mercurial are poets’ imaginations that not even champion typists can keep abreast of them. If there’s a problem, it’s something to which they can return in a quiet moment way down the road. The focus of this week will be to set ourselves against this popular image, to make every moment a quiet moment, to fix problems as they arise, to revise even as the poem’s vision for itself is slowly coming into being and, in the end, to cut down on a lot of unnecessary work. The key to this approach is to write the poem one line at a time, to allow one idea to lead to another, and to avoid getting ahead of ourselves. When we implement this approach, the poem is now, paradoxically, more likely to bring us to a place of genuine immediacy and vitality which had hitherto been illusory.
Speakers
avatar for Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon

Visiting Author
Paul Muldoon is the author of a number of poetry collections, including New Weather (1973), Why Brownlee Left (1980), Quoof (1983), Meeting the British (1987), New Selected Poems: 1968-1994 (1996), Hay (1998), Moy Sand and Gravel (2002)—which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the... Read More →
Monday June 15, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry

9:00am MDT

No Genre/All Genre Generative Lab with Eileen Myles
Monday June 15, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA
In this weeklong seminar, poets, fiction writers, and memoirists (and even non-writers) will re-consider and even de-rail their works in progress (or write new ones) informed by some new approaches, formal constraints, good talk, and engagement with other art forms. We’ll write at least four pieces this week, taking cues from the history of poetry and prose, music, photos, and film, and we will effectively banish the lines that separate these forms of expression in order to instill our own work with the real breadth of this postmodern world. Bring a song, a problem (aesthetic or personal), or at least one significant photo, stuffed animal, flyer, something—a piece of real or artificial fruit. The goal is to create a live working environment, a studio effect, in order to generate more work and to get reinstalled or re-awakened in our writing process.

*Since this is a generative class and can accommodate a few more people, Eileen cannot meet one-on-one with each participant, but they tend to be around Lit Fest and there are ample opportunities for additional talks.
Speakers
avatar for Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles

Visiting Author
Eileen Myles the author of more than twenty books, including a “Working Life,” For Now, Evolution, Afterglow (a dog memoir), Chelsea Girls, and I Must Be Living Twice: New & Selected Poems 1974-2014. Myles’s many honors include four Lambda Literary Awards, the Clark Prize for... Read More →
Monday June 15, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry, Multi-Genre

1:30pm MDT

Squash For Golfers: Line Movement in Prose and Poetry
Monday June 15, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
The defining characteristic of verse, formal or free, is the fact that the line makes a turn (versus) at some point before it reaches the right hand margin. There are any number of reasons why and places where that turn might be made. This seminar will focus on developing strategies for improving our sense of the line ending through readings of poems by Erika Jong, Joyce Carol Oates, W.G. Sebald, Colm Toibin, and John Updike.
Speakers
avatar for Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon

Visiting Author
Paul Muldoon is the author of a number of poetry collections, including New Weather (1973), Why Brownlee Left (1980), Quoof (1983), Meeting the British (1987), New Selected Poems: 1968-1994 (1996), Hay (1998), Moy Sand and Gravel (2002)—which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the... Read More →
Monday June 15, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry

4:00pm MDT

Collage as Poetic Practice
Monday June 15, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
What can poets learn from the techniques of collage? In this image & text based seminar, we will discuss and practice collage in both written and visual mediums. Come ready to experiment and to play with textual fragments, images, scissors, paper, and glue. Participants, please bring collage materials (things to cut up).
Speakers
avatar for Andrea Rexilius

Andrea Rexilius

Faculty
Andrea Rexilius is the author of: Sister Urn (Sidebrow, 2019), New Organism: Essais (Letter Machine, 2014), Half of What They Carried Flew Away (Letter Machine, 2012), and To Be Human Is To Be A Conversation (Rescue Press, 2011), as well as the chapbooks Séance (Coconut Books, 2014... Read More →
Monday June 15, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry, Multi-Genre

4:00pm MDT

Letting the I Ching Help You Write Your Story (V)
Monday June 15, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
Philip K. Dick claimed that he did not write one of his greatest novels, The Man in the High Castle, by himself. Dick discovered the I Ching when he began the novel and he claimed the I Ching co-wrote the novel with him. The I Ching is a 3,000 year-old collection of 64 poems. It can be read as philosophy but is most famous as an oracle, using a method of casting coins or yarrow stalks. This workshop guides students through the process of consulting the I Ching to guide the course of their story.
Speakers
avatar for Henry Lien

Henry Lien

Faculty
Henry Lien is a 2012 graduate of Clarion West Writers Workshop, Seattle. He is the author of the critically-acclaimed and award-winning Peasprout Chen middle grade fantasy series, which he began writing under the guidance of George R.R. Martin, Kelly Link, and Chuck Palahniuk at Clarion... Read More →
Monday June 15, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
  Poetry, Multi-Genre
 
Tuesday, June 16
 

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Poetry Workshop: Draft Exclusion with Paul Muldoon
Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA
The popular image of the poet is as a dasher off of poem drafts. So manic and mercurial are poets’ imaginations that not even champion typists can keep abreast of them. If there’s a problem, it’s something to which they can return in a quiet moment way down the road. The focus of this week will be to set ourselves against this popular image, to make every moment a quiet moment, to fix problems as they arise, to revise even as the poem’s vision for itself is slowly coming into being and, in the end, to cut down on a lot of unnecessary work. The key to this approach is to write the poem one line at a time, to allow one idea to lead to another, and to avoid getting ahead of ourselves. When we implement this approach, the poem is now, paradoxically, more likely to bring us to a place of genuine immediacy and vitality which had hitherto been illusory.
Speakers
avatar for Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon

Visiting Author
Paul Muldoon is the author of a number of poetry collections, including New Weather (1973), Why Brownlee Left (1980), Quoof (1983), Meeting the British (1987), New Selected Poems: 1968-1994 (1996), Hay (1998), Moy Sand and Gravel (2002)—which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry

9:00am MDT

Literary Lightning: Finding the Poetry in Your Prose (V)
Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
Are there lines in your stories or essays that, when you reread them, contain multitudes? Ideas in which your thinking has deepened or changed? How do you pull threads from previously written prose and turn it into prose poetry or hybrid prose? What was once an essay may carry the seeds of a flash essay, prose poem or song. We’ll explore work that began in one form and transformed into another and talk about how to do that for a piece of our own.
Speakers
avatar for Ellen Blum Barish

Ellen Blum Barish

Faculty
Ellen Blum Barish is the author of the spiritual memoir Seven Springs: A Memoir and the essay collection Views from the Home Office Window: On Motherhood, Family and Life. Her work explores themes of identity, family, and spirituality. You can find her essays and prose poems in Brevity... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
Virtual
  Poetry, Multi-Genre

9:00am MDT

No Genre/All Genre Generative Lab with Eileen Myles
Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA
In this weeklong seminar, poets, fiction writers, and memoirists (and even non-writers) will re-consider and even de-rail their works in progress (or write new ones) informed by some new approaches, formal constraints, good talk, and engagement with other art forms. We’ll write at least four pieces this week, taking cues from the history of poetry and prose, music, photos, and film, and we will effectively banish the lines that separate these forms of expression in order to instill our own work with the real breadth of this postmodern world. Bring a song, a problem (aesthetic or personal), or at least one significant photo, stuffed animal, flyer, something—a piece of real or artificial fruit. The goal is to create a live working environment, a studio effect, in order to generate more work and to get reinstalled or re-awakened in our writing process.

*Since this is a generative class and can accommodate a few more people, Eileen cannot meet one-on-one with each participant, but they tend to be around Lit Fest and there are ample opportunities for additional talks.
Speakers
avatar for Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles

Visiting Author
Eileen Myles the author of more than twenty books, including a “Working Life,” For Now, Evolution, Afterglow (a dog memoir), Chelsea Girls, and I Must Be Living Twice: New & Selected Poems 1974-2014. Myles’s many honors include four Lambda Literary Awards, the Clark Prize for... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry, Multi-Genre

1:30pm MDT

Where the Deer and the Antelope (and the Poets) Play: On the Page
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
With our usual poetic practice, we might focus on clarity and meaning while letting our instincts determine the lines, stanzas, and punctuation. Some poems entice us to try something new. In this workshop, we’ll play on the page in hopes of discovering new layers and poetic intentions. We’ll talk punctuation and how it honors rhythm, including Dickinson’s emdash, when to “and” or “&,” and the mystery of / and // used by writers like Dana Levin. We will also consider methods of end stopping, enjambing, and even omitting punctuation altogether.
Speakers
avatar for Juan J. Morales

Juan J. Morales

Faculty
Juan J. Morales is the son of an Ecuadorian mother and Puerto Rican father. He is the author of three poetry collections, including The Handyman’s Guide to End Times, winner of the 2019 International Latino Book Award. Recent poems have appeared in Crazyhorse, The Laurel Review... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry, Multi-Genre

4:00pm MDT

Forms and Functions: Poetic and Otherwise
Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
In this generative workshop, we'll try our hand at writing poems using some newish, wild, and invented forms---like the burning haibun, the duplex, and more. Bring your rhymes and schemes and creative impulses, and be ready to write, sing, count, and laugh.
Speakers
avatar for Michael Henry

Michael Henry

Faculty
Michael J. Henry, MFA currently serves as Executive Director of Lighthouse, where he also teaches poetry and memoir and essay workshops. A former recipient of a Colorado Council on the Arts Fellowship and a PlatteForum Fellowship, his work has appeared in such places as Copper Nickel... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry, Multi-Genre

4:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Being a Romantic Poet in the 21st Century
Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
How might Romanticism translate to our time? In this workshop, we'll carry its core precepts—spontaneity, accessible language, the connection between nature and human creativity, the power of individual imagination—into contemporary poetry. Drawing on Keats, Wordsworth, and Blake, we'll make our own departures into visionary lyricism.
Speakers
avatar for Elizabeth Robinson

Elizabeth Robinson

Faculty
Elizabeth Robinson is the author of over a dozen volumes of poetry. Her most recent books are Three Novels (Omnidawn), Counterpart (Ahsahta), and Blue Heron (Center for Literary Publishing). Robinson’s mixed genre meditation, On Ghosts (Solid Objects), was a finalist for the Los... Read More →
Tuesday June 16, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT
Virtual
  Poetry
 
Wednesday, June 17
 

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Poetry Workshop: Draft Exclusion with Paul Muldoon
Wednesday June 17, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA
The popular image of the poet is as a dasher off of poem drafts. So manic and mercurial are poets’ imaginations that not even champion typists can keep abreast of them. If there’s a problem, it’s something to which they can return in a quiet moment way down the road. The focus of this week will be to set ourselves against this popular image, to make every moment a quiet moment, to fix problems as they arise, to revise even as the poem’s vision for itself is slowly coming into being and, in the end, to cut down on a lot of unnecessary work. The key to this approach is to write the poem one line at a time, to allow one idea to lead to another, and to avoid getting ahead of ourselves. When we implement this approach, the poem is now, paradoxically, more likely to bring us to a place of genuine immediacy and vitality which had hitherto been illusory.
Speakers
avatar for Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon

Visiting Author
Paul Muldoon is the author of a number of poetry collections, including New Weather (1973), Why Brownlee Left (1980), Quoof (1983), Meeting the British (1987), New Selected Poems: 1968-1994 (1996), Hay (1998), Moy Sand and Gravel (2002)—which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the... Read More →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry

9:00am MDT

No Genre/All Genre Generative Lab with Eileen Myles
Wednesday June 17, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA
In this weeklong seminar, poets, fiction writers, and memoirists (and even non-writers) will re-consider and even de-rail their works in progress (or write new ones) informed by some new approaches, formal constraints, good talk, and engagement with other art forms. We’ll write at least four pieces this week, taking cues from the history of poetry and prose, music, photos, and film, and we will effectively banish the lines that separate these forms of expression in order to instill our own work with the real breadth of this postmodern world. Bring a song, a problem (aesthetic or personal), or at least one significant photo, stuffed animal, flyer, something—a piece of real or artificial fruit. The goal is to create a live working environment, a studio effect, in order to generate more work and to get reinstalled or re-awakened in our writing process.

*Since this is a generative class and can accommodate a few more people, Eileen cannot meet one-on-one with each participant, but they tend to be around Lit Fest and there are ample opportunities for additional talks.
Speakers
avatar for Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles

Visiting Author
Eileen Myles the author of more than twenty books, including a “Working Life,” For Now, Evolution, Afterglow (a dog memoir), Chelsea Girls, and I Must Be Living Twice: New & Selected Poems 1974-2014. Myles’s many honors include four Lambda Literary Awards, the Clark Prize for... Read More →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 9:00am - 11:30pm MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry, Multi-Genre

1:30pm MDT

Making Conversation: Inviting New Voices into The Poem
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
“The Sun woke me this morning loud
and clear, saying "Hey! I've been
trying to wake you up for fifteen
minutes.”

In Frank O’Hara’s “A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island,” the dialogue creates character, humor, tension, and meaning. How might we invite other voices into our poems as a way to open new opportunities? In this generative workshop we will read and discuss poems that make use of quotations and dialogue as counterpoints to the voice of the speaker, exploring what extra voices make possible, and using these techniques as springboards for our own work.
Speakers
avatar for Emily Perez

Emily Perez

Faculty
Emily Pérez is the author of What Flies Want, winner of the Iowa Prize; House of Sugar, House of Stone; and two chapbooks. She is co-editor of the anthology The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood. A CantoMundo fellow and Ledbury Critic, she’s received support from Hedgebrook... Read More →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry

1:30pm MDT

The Supple Sonnet
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Whether your reference point is Shakespeare or Diane Seuss, Gwendolyn Brooks or Claude
McKay, Natasha Trethewey or Tyehimba Jess or Gerard Manley Hopkins, you have heard of this poetic form. There’s a reason the sonnet has persisted and permutated over hundreds of years— it’s versatile and malleable enough to handle whatever you want to throw at it. In this craft seminar, we’ll look at sonnets old and new, rhymed and unrhymed, experimental, contrapuntal, broken, ghostly, and more, and we’ll try our hands at making one ourselves.
Speakers
avatar for Melissa Range

Melissa Range

Visiting Author
Melissa Range is the author of Printer’s Fist, winner of the 2025 Vanderbilt Literary Prize (Vanderbilt University Press, 2026), as well as Scriptorium (Beacon Press, 2016) and Horse and Rider (Texas Tech University Press, 2010). Range is the recipient of awards and fellowships... Read More →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 1:30pm - 3:30pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry

4:00pm MDT

Just 2 Poems (V)
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
In this class, we’ll experience the power of deep reading. Before class, you’ll be given two poems that serve as jumping off points to explore and be inspired by master poets of exceptional craft. Previous years have featured long poems by BH Fairchild, Larry Levis and Brigit Pegeen Kelly. We’ll explore both the measured unfolding of a longer poem and the lyric compression of another. Exercises, experiments, and your own poems will follow.
Speakers
avatar for Lynn Wagner

Lynn Wagner

Faculty
Lynn Wagner is the author of No Blues This Raucous Song, which won the Slapering Hol Chapbook competition. She received an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh, where she won the Academy of American Poets prize. She has earned fellowships to the Virginia Center of the Creative Arts... Read More →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
  Poetry

4:00pm MDT

Scaffolds and Skeletons: Crafting Strong Foundations in Poetry and Fiction
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Register Here!
Structure should never be an afterthought for poets and writers—in poetry it often is the whole point, and in story it is the spine that lets a story stand upright—in this generative seminar we will work to create the frame and foundation for your own great poems and stories (and essays). We will begin with some core architectural strategies and choices that help shape compelling work across genres: tension arcs, complications and crisis turns, scene and image sequencing, and the purposeful use of propulsive detail. Seth is an award-winning poet and fiction writer and has taught both genres for decades. This seminar will help participants build pieces that move with intention and hold their weight. Through (very) short readings, craft discussions, and hands‑on exercises, writers will experiment with scaffolds that invite discovery and revision strategies that bring clarity to the page. Suitable for all levels.
Speakers
avatar for Seth Brady Tucker

Seth Brady Tucker

Faculty
Seth Brady Tucker is a poet and fiction writer originally from Lander, Wyoming. His first book won the 2011 Elixir Press Editor’s Poetry Prize (Mormon Boy), and was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. His second book won the Gival Press Poetry Award (We Deserve the Gods We Ask... Read More →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
  Poetry, Fiction

4:00pm MDT

Two-Day Intensive: Being a Romantic Poet in the 21st Century
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
How might Romanticism translate to our time? In this workshop, we'll carry its core precepts—spontaneity, accessible language, the connection between nature and human creativity, the power of individual imagination—into contemporary poetry. Drawing on Keats, Wordsworth, and Blake, we'll make our own departures into visionary lyricism.
Speakers
avatar for Elizabeth Robinson

Elizabeth Robinson

Faculty
Elizabeth Robinson is the author of over a dozen volumes of poetry. Her most recent books are Three Novels (Omnidawn), Counterpart (Ahsahta), and Blue Heron (Center for Literary Publishing). Robinson’s mixed genre meditation, On Ghosts (Solid Objects), was a finalist for the Los... Read More →
Wednesday June 17, 2026 4:00pm - 7:00pm MDT
Virtual
  Poetry
 
Thursday, June 18
 

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Poetry Workshop: Draft Exclusion with Paul Muldoon
Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA
The popular image of the poet is as a dasher off of poem drafts. So manic and mercurial are poets’ imaginations that not even champion typists can keep abreast of them. If there’s a problem, it’s something to which they can return in a quiet moment way down the road. The focus of this week will be to set ourselves against this popular image, to make every moment a quiet moment, to fix problems as they arise, to revise even as the poem’s vision for itself is slowly coming into being and, in the end, to cut down on a lot of unnecessary work. The key to this approach is to write the poem one line at a time, to allow one idea to lead to another, and to avoid getting ahead of ourselves. When we implement this approach, the poem is now, paradoxically, more likely to bring us to a place of genuine immediacy and vitality which had hitherto been illusory.
Speakers
avatar for Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon

Visiting Author
Paul Muldoon is the author of a number of poetry collections, including New Weather (1973), Why Brownlee Left (1980), Quoof (1983), Meeting the British (1987), New Selected Poems: 1968-1994 (1996), Hay (1998), Moy Sand and Gravel (2002)—which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the... Read More →
Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry

9:00am MDT

No Genre/All Genre Generative Lab with Eileen Myles
Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA
In this weeklong seminar, poets, fiction writers, and memoirists (and even non-writers) will re-consider and even de-rail their works in progress (or write new ones) informed by some new approaches, formal constraints, good talk, and engagement with other art forms. We’ll write at least four pieces this week, taking cues from the history of poetry and prose, music, photos, and film, and we will effectively banish the lines that separate these forms of expression in order to instill our own work with the real breadth of this postmodern world. Bring a song, a problem (aesthetic or personal), or at least one significant photo, stuffed animal, flyer, something—a piece of real or artificial fruit. The goal is to create a live working environment, a studio effect, in order to generate more work and to get reinstalled or re-awakened in our writing process.

*Since this is a generative class and can accommodate a few more people, Eileen cannot meet one-on-one with each participant, but they tend to be around Lit Fest and there are ample opportunities for additional talks.
Speakers
avatar for Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles

Visiting Author
Eileen Myles the author of more than twenty books, including a “Working Life,” For Now, Evolution, Afterglow (a dog memoir), Chelsea Girls, and I Must Be Living Twice: New & Selected Poems 1974-2014. Myles’s many honors include four Lambda Literary Awards, the Clark Prize for... Read More →
Thursday June 18, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry, Multi-Genre

4:00pm MDT

Exploring Prose Poetry: The Art of Condensed Writing (V)
Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
Register Here!
In this course, we’ll explore the definition and intentions of prose poetry. We’ll have close readings and discussion of contemporary masters like James Tate, Harryette Mullen, Victoria Chang, Shivani Mehta and others. There will also be time for generative prompts and prose poetry.
Speakers
avatar for Jose Hernandez Diaz

Jose Hernandez Diaz

Faculty
Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020) and Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024). His work appears in The American Poetry Review, Boulevard, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Georgia Review, Huizache, Iowa Review... Read More →
Thursday June 18, 2026 4:00pm - 6:00pm MDT
Virtual
  Poetry, Multi-Genre
 
Friday, June 19
 

9:00am MDT

Advanced Weeklong Poetry Workshop: Draft Exclusion with Paul Muldoon
Friday June 19, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA
The popular image of the poet is as a dasher off of poem drafts. So manic and mercurial are poets’ imaginations that not even champion typists can keep abreast of them. If there’s a problem, it’s something to which they can return in a quiet moment way down the road. The focus of this week will be to set ourselves against this popular image, to make every moment a quiet moment, to fix problems as they arise, to revise even as the poem’s vision for itself is slowly coming into being and, in the end, to cut down on a lot of unnecessary work. The key to this approach is to write the poem one line at a time, to allow one idea to lead to another, and to avoid getting ahead of ourselves. When we implement this approach, the poem is now, paradoxically, more likely to bring us to a place of genuine immediacy and vitality which had hitherto been illusory.
Speakers
avatar for Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon

Visiting Author
Paul Muldoon is the author of a number of poetry collections, including New Weather (1973), Why Brownlee Left (1980), Quoof (1983), Meeting the British (1987), New Selected Poems: 1968-1994 (1996), Hay (1998), Moy Sand and Gravel (2002)—which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the... Read More →
Friday June 19, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry

9:00am MDT

No Genre/All Genre Generative Lab with Eileen Myles
Friday June 19, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA
In this weeklong seminar, poets, fiction writers, and memoirists (and even non-writers) will re-consider and even de-rail their works in progress (or write new ones) informed by some new approaches, formal constraints, good talk, and engagement with other art forms. We’ll write at least four pieces this week, taking cues from the history of poetry and prose, music, photos, and film, and we will effectively banish the lines that separate these forms of expression in order to instill our own work with the real breadth of this postmodern world. Bring a song, a problem (aesthetic or personal), or at least one significant photo, stuffed animal, flyer, something—a piece of real or artificial fruit. The goal is to create a live working environment, a studio effect, in order to generate more work and to get reinstalled or re-awakened in our writing process.

*Since this is a generative class and can accommodate a few more people, Eileen cannot meet one-on-one with each participant, but they tend to be around Lit Fest and there are ample opportunities for additional talks.
Speakers
avatar for Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles

Visiting Author
Eileen Myles the author of more than twenty books, including a “Working Life,” For Now, Evolution, Afterglow (a dog memoir), Chelsea Girls, and I Must Be Living Twice: New & Selected Poems 1974-2014. Myles’s many honors include four Lambda Literary Awards, the Clark Prize for... Read More →
Friday June 19, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am MDT
TBA 3844 York Street, Denver, CO 80305
  Poetry, Multi-Genre
 

Get help with the event

Contact event planner Event login
View support guides Find upcoming events
Create an event you'd love to attend!
Explore why organizers choose Sched • Success stories
Event App • Event scheduling • Event registration • Event ticketing • Sched forms • Call for papers • Badges • Conferences
© 2026. SCHED LLC - All rights reserved - Helping events since 2008
Conference Scheduling App • Privacy • Terms
Share Modal

Share this link via

Or copy link

Filter sessions
Apply filters to sessions.
Friday, June 12
Saturday, June 13
Sunday, June 14
Monday, June 15
Tuesday, June 16
Wednesday, June 17
Thursday, June 18
Friday, June 19
Fort Greene Bar
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
TBA
Virtual
  • All Genres
  • Dramatic Writing
  • Fiction
  • Nonfiction/Memoir
  • Poetry
  • Publishing/Career
  • Writing Process
  • YA/Children's
  • Type
  • advanced
  • intermediate
  • intro
  • Audience
  • Advanced Workshop
  • Craft Seminar
  • Event
  • Lunchtime Business Panels
  • Two-Day Intensive