Hey poet!
Welcome to our monthly generative writing workshop: the BrainTrust.
The Poetry Lab is a community learning space dedicated to mentoring and encouraging poets and writers as they craft their learning journeys. We started in a co-work space in Downtown Long Beach in 2013. Meeting twice a month, our Labs covered topics like Diction, Tone, and Voice, Poetry of Twitter, Power of Revision, and Blind Date with a Book. In other words, these workshops were fun and instructional, often taking non-traditional approaches to poetry.
The BrainTrust series carries on this tradition. Everyone is welcome here. That means first-time poets, moms and dads, high school students, architects, professors, gamers, and artists of all genres and mediums are welcome to attend as long as they are ready to write!
2nd Tuesday of every month
Last year we wrote about the 5 Forms We Were Curious About, join us Tuesday, April 9 as we put these forms into action with the 5 Forms Workshop. This 2.5-hour collaboratively taught class will dive into confessional narrative poems, odes, postcard poems, ribcages, and erasure poems. Each form will be presented with a mini-lesson on the craft, sample poem, and writing prompt for you to try for yourself.
Whether you're a seasoned poet or a budding writer there’s something here for you to explore: elevate your craft with an evocative narrative, celebrate the mundane with an ode, capture a snapshot of time in a postcard, structure your feelings in a ribcage, or uncover the power of the unsaid in erasure. We’re putting our maximum creative efforts into this interactive workshop in celebration of National Poetry Month. Join us!
The 5 Forms Workshop
ENROLL HERE Tuesday, April 9, 2024
5:30pm - 8:00pm PT
One-Time Generative Writing Class
via Zoom
dive into 5 creative forms for national poetry month.
INSTRUCTOR BIOKelsey Bryan-Zwick (she/they) is a disabled, queer, bilingual immigrant, and author based in Los Angeles, California.
Talicha J. (she/her) is a Black, queer poet, and workshop facilitator from Marietta, Georgia.
Lori Walker (she/her) is a freelance writer and digital marketer. She writes personal essays, memoir, and poetry in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Anne Marie Wells (she/they) is an award-winning, Queer poet, playwright, memoirist and storyteller navigating the world with a chronic illness.
Pantoum Anatomy: Exploring Bodily Forms
ENROLL HERE A Pantoum is a poetic form comprising quatrains with repeating lines, where the second and fourth lines of each stanza become the first and third lines of the next. This structure fosters rhythmic continuity and allows for the exploration of themes through repeated and varied lines.
In this workshop, we’ll approach the Pantoum through the lens of bodily autonomy, exploring writing about how individuals assert autonomy over their bodies and how we navigate situations where autonomy is threatened. We will analyze at least four poems by diverse poets and discuss the basics of the Pantoum, its versatility, and the power of breaking its rules. Participants will have access to my curated online worksheet housed in Notion, which will assist them in drafting their Pantoums during and after the workshop.
Tuesday, May 14, 2024
5:30pm - 7:30pm PT
One-Time Generative Writing Class
via Zoom
INSTRUCTOR BIOTalicha J. is a Black, queer poet, and workshop facilitator. Her work has been featured in several literary magazines and on the popular Button Poetry YouTube channel. She is also the author of the book "Falling in Love with Picking Myself Up." Through her work, Talicha is committed to delving deep into issues such as self-esteem, body image, and mental health. For more information, visit www.talichajpoetry.com.
break rules. build power.
This class is an “abreboca,” an appetizer that offers an overview of the “weird” world of speculative poetry. We will talk about what speculative poetry is, read some examples, talk about common themes and categories, and generate new work. Come ready to immerse yourself in the world of beasts, dragons, and things that might or might not exist.
Give me the Gossip: Writing Speculative Poetry
ENROLL HERE Tuesday, June 11, 2024
5:30pm - 7:30pm PT
One-Time Generative Writing Class
via Zoom
INSTRUCTOR BIOLeonora Simonovis (she/her) is a Venezuelan American poet, editor and educator. Her debut poetry collection, Study of the Raft, won the 2021 Colorado Prize for Poetry. Her work has appeared in DMQ Review, The Hopper, About Place Journal, River Mouth Review, Verse Daily, and others. She has received support from The Poetry Foundation, VONA, Women Who Submit, and the Vermont Studio Center. Leonora is the Reviews Editor at Ecotheo Review and the Currents Editor at terrain.org.
Unleash your appetite for magic.
In this course, we’ll start from the basics, exploring the origins of the contrapuntal form with poems by Tyehimba Jess and Tarfia Faizullah. Throughout these two hours of active discussion and exercises, we’ll learn simple techniques for crafting poems that weave together different narratives, blending, rerouting, tuning, and compounding voices and rhythms in our own multi-layered poems.
Choral Counter Texts: Exploring the Contrapuntal
ENROLL HERE Tuesday, July 9, 2024
5:30pm - 7:30pm PT
One-Time Generative Writing Class
via Zoom
blend, weave, reroute, tune your poem into a multilayered marvel.
INSTRUCTOR BIODanielle Mitchell (she/her) is an intersectional feminist, writer, and teaching artist. She Founding Director of The Poetry Lab and host The Poetry Lab Podcast. Her work has appeared in journals such as Hayden’s Ferry Review, Vinyl, Four Way Review, Connotation Press, and others. She is the author of Makes the Daughter-in-Law Cry, winner of the Clockwise Chapbook Prize (Tebot Bach, 2017). Danielle has received scholarships to travel to Patmos Island, Greece to study poetry, as well as grants from the California Arts Council, Long Beach Arts Council and The Poetry Foundation. Her work is fiercely feminist, aiming to disrupt misogyny and dethrone the male gaze. She performs machine collaborations, writes prose poems, and plays with hybrid forms. Find out more at imaginarydani.com.
In this workshop, participants will explore poems about the changing of time, describing time, and time as an important factor in the theme. How do poets convey the passing of time in poetry? In a search for examples techniques, we will learn about aubades and nocturnes.
It's Poetry O'Clock! Writing About Time
ENROLL HERE Tuesday, August 13, 2024
5:30pm - 7:30pm PT
One-Time Generative Writing Class
via Zoom
embrace the dawn.
INSTRUCTOR BIOAnne Marie Wells (She | They) is an award-winning, Queer poet, playwright, memoirist and storyteller navigating the world with a chronic illness. She is the author of Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems (Curious Corvid Publishing, 2023) and Mother, (v) (Cinnamon Press, 2024) winner of the 2023 Cinnamon Press Chapbook Contest. She currently lives in the sweet spot between the Shenandoah Mountains and Washington D.C. where she works as a freelance copy editor and creative writing instructor. Find out more at annemariewellswriter.com.
In this course, you will go from feeling stuck in the shadows and invalidated to embracing your freedom and self-expression as an artist. Through guided prompts, you will speak head-on with the enemies of your creative self-worth, name the voices of the monsters that have heretofore kept you from the fullness of your creativity, and from a position of understanding and liberation, explore your vibrant imaginative being. As writers, the very act of writing is what permits us as qualified. Regardless of any external (or internal) conflict. What does life look like when you say yes to yourself? Let's explore.
The Writer’s Shadow: A Process of Self-Permission
ENROLL HERE Tuesday, October 8, 2024
5:30pm - 7:30pm PT
One-Time Generative Writing Class
via Zoom
speak head-on to the enemies of your creative self-worth.
INSTRUCTOR BIOKeimahney Carlisle (she/her) is a writer and poet currently based in Philadelphia, originally from California. She earned her B.S. in Business Administration with a minor in Multicultural Leadership Studies. She was a Get Lit-Words Ignite Fellow in the Summer of 2021 and served as an AmeriCorps member with the Educational Nonprofit City Year Philadelphia (’21-’23). Keimahney is passionate about human expression and social advocacy.
In this culinary-inspired workshop we will explore the works of poets like Jane Wong, Danez Smith, Chen Chen to discover how contemporary poets “eat” within their poems. Learn tactics for cooking food into poetry and discover the metaphorical depth of food as a love language. We will encounter themes of rot, scarcity, indulgence, and doubt.
What’s Eating You? Writing Food Poems
ENROLL HERE Tuesday, November 12, 2024
5:30pm - 7:30pm PT
One-Time Generative Writing Class
via Zoom
INSTRUCTOR BIOKaren Zheng (she/her) is a first-generation, queer, Chinese-American. Her poetry has been featured in Emerson Review, Sine Theta Magazine, Honey Literary, The Wave, and elsewhere. She is a Breadloaf Writers’ Conference Contributor in 2022 and a Roots. Wounds. Words Poetry Fellow in 2023. In her free time, she hosts the Mx. Asian American podcast and Tucked in Bed podcast. Find out more about her at https://www.karenzheng.com/.
savor the flavor.