Poetry 101: Voice

Member Price: $30 / General Public: $35

Deadline to Register: November 19, 5 pm

Instructor: Anastasia Nikolis

Poetry is just a person writing down their feelings, right? Not in the ways you might think. Paradoxically, poets often draw on the useful distinction between the poet and the poem’s speaker to craft that deeply personal quality we are all so drawn to. By looking at examples of poems that lean into constructing characters and the artifice of the lyric “I,” participants will explore the distinction between poet and poetic speaker in order to start thinking about their own signature poetic voice.

Anastasia Nikolis is a scholar, writer, and teacher. She holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Rochester, where she focused on 20th-21st century American poetry. She currently is the Poetry Editor for the literary translation press, Open Letter Books, and teaches courses in writing, literature, and gender studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology and at St. John Fisher College. For more information, find her online at www.anastasianikolis.com and on Twitter @nikolisanastasi.