Mountain Words Festival 2026

“Poetry has the intangible, almost inexplicable power to make something happen, to move people, to console the inconsolable.” – Martin Espada

“The challenges of the form ask us to move past our first impulses, to attend to aspects of poem we might otherwise ignore, to invite surprise, and to allow meaning to grow organically”–Maggie Queeney

How can we call on the tools of imagination and resistance in our writing to strengthen our voice and agency on the page and in our lives? In this generative writing workshop, we’ll read poems by poets we admire that integrate social/ public experience with the personal. The first part of this workshop explores the craft of powerful narrative and lyric poems that take on charged events. How does the poet enter the subject matter? How are poetic elements incorporated, such as voice, image, and form? We will consider choices the poet makes such as who is the audience, who is the speaker, and what is the conceit? With the poems as models and using provocative prompts, we’ll draft one or two new poems. You’ll leave with new poems and fresh techniques for how to handle challenging material.