Featuring Academy Chancellors Diane Seuss and Afaa Michael Weaver

Join a national community of educators seeking valuable tools and resources for opening doors to poetry in the classroom.

The two-session, virtual intensive offers high-school English teachers the opportunity to:

• Learn directly from celebrated contemporary poets
• Participate in a generative poetry-writing workshop
• Gain new inspiration and strategies for teaching poetry

Both sessions will be facilitated by poet, educator, and scholar Erika Luckert. 

Session 1: Reading Contemporary Poetry, with guest poet Afaa Michael Weaver
Wednesday, July 30, 2025, 10 a.m.–1p.m. ET

Participants practice ways of reading and engaging with a poem, with an emphasis on creative response, pleasure, and play. Teachers will gain confidence in their own skills as readers of poetry and strategies for engaging their students in reading poetry.

Afaa Michael Weaver is the author of numerous acclaimed poetry collections, including A Fire in the Hills, winner of the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize, and The Government of Nature, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Award. A former factory worker who went on to earn degrees from Excelsior College and Brown University, he has received such honors as the Wallace Stevens Award and a Fulbright Scholarship to Taiwan. Professor emeritus at Simmons University, Weaver is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and teaches in the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College.

Session 2: Reading to Write: Poetry Workshop, with guest poet Diane Seuss
Thursday, July 31, 2025, 10 a.m.–1p.m. ET

Participants practice writing their own poems, inspired by the work of the visiting poets. Teachers will have the opportunity to write their own poetry, acquire strategies for using contemporary poetry to prompt student writing, and gain tools for reducing barriers to sharing creative work in the classroom.

Diane Seuss is the author of six acclaimed poetry collections, including frank: sonnets, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and Modern Poetry, a 2024 National Book Award finalist. A Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the John Updike Award, she has taught at institutions including Kalamazoo College, the University of Michigan, and Washington University. In 2024, Seuss was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She lives in Michigan.

Use code TEACHER when you register by June 15 to receive 15% off tuition. Registration deadline: July 7.

This program receives generous support from Hawthornden Foundation and the Eve and Simon Colin Foundation.