the things themselves: an 8-week poetry workshop with taylor johnson

This workshop takes its title–and its grounding sense–from Lucille Clifton's poem "The Death of Fred Clifton.” We will be in study together around the use and function of line, the dynamism inherent in poetic syntax, and the exhaustion and precision of image. Together, we'll explore the poetry of Lucille Clifton, alongside the poems of modern and contemporary poets. Each participant will have the opportunity to workshop two of their poems with the group, as well as engage in generative prompts and craft and textual analysis.

Participants should have a writing practice prior to joining this workshop.

Artist Bio:

Taylor Johnson is from Washington, DC. He is the author of Inheritance (Alice James Books, 2020), winner of the 2021 Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. His work appears in Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, The Baffler, Scalawag, and elsewhere. Johnson is a Cave Canem graduate fellow, a recipient of the 2017 Larry Neal Writers’ Award from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities; he was also awarded the 2021 Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging Writers from Lambda Literary. Taylor was the inaugural 2022 Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim Museum. He is the Poet Laureate of Takoma Park, Maryland. With his wife, Elizabeth Bryant, Taylor curates the Green Way Reading Series at People’s Book in Takoma Park.