In this class we will explore a wide range of poetry from around the world, both by reading poems and by writing our own. We will approach poetry both as a written and as a spoken art, getting poems into our bones by reading them aloud and often weaving them together with music. We will focus on the sound of language, hearing (and sometimes pronouncing) poems in many languages including Anglo-Saxon, Persian, and Ancient Greek. Some of the poets we will read will include Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Rumi, Pablo Neruda, Wang Wei and W.B. Yeats. We will study poetic meter as well as such forms as the sonnet, the ghazal, and the haiku; we will write poems inspired by those we read, and will practice the art of following our own inspirations to new and wild places. Students will be required to keep a notebook for their own writing.
Instructors: Jay Leeming and Melissa Tuckey
Instructor Bio: Jay Leeming is a poet, musician and storyteller. He is the author of the poetry books Dynamite on a China Plate (Backwaters Press, 2006) and Miracle Atlas (Writers and Books, 2011) and the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has taught poetry workshops throughout the United States and abroad, and his poems have appeared in a wide variety of magazines. He served as Poet Laureate of Tompkins County from 2010-2011, and since 2018 has been working as a professional storyteller in schools and libraries in the Finger Lakes.
Instructor Bio: Melissa Tuckey is a poet, editor, and educator. She is author of Tenuous Chapel, a book of poems selected by poet Charles Simic for the ABZ first book award. She’s editor of Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology. She’s a former Poet Laureate of Tompkins County and an emeritus fellow at Black Earth Institute. Melissa Tuckey is enthusiastic about poetry and has taught writing in universities, DC public schools, NC governor’s school, the Tompkins County jail, and at interdisciplinary conferences.
Required Materials: pen or pencil; notebook and folder or looseleaf notebook; The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Shorter Fifth Edition (provided by TEEN DAY); Curated Anthology (provided by TEEN DAY)
Additional Materials Fee: $50 to cover books
TEEN DAY Ithaca 