This six-week course isn’t just about finding your voice but creating one!

Whether influenced by your own experiences, a piece of media, nature, or the people around you, you can choose how you want to present your ideas so readers have a unique experience. Your poems might come from someone who lurks in the dense shadows of an alleyway, who flies when they wear green, or who eats dog food from a cereal bowl when it rains. In creating a fictional narrator, we can find quirky and powerful metaphors that leave lasting impressions.

Open to grades six through eight, each class will begin with an introduction to different poetry styles, followed by a writing exercise, and end with a reading and discussion. Students are encouraged to read their own poetry for feedback, but it’s totally optional. This course is about finding inspiration and inspiring each other. To that end, the last day of the course, as it falls on Halloween, will be a poetry party. Students are welcome to come in costume and bring a piece of poetry to read, their own, or someone else’s.

All enrolled students will have the opportunity to publish work in the 2025 issue of the National Writers Series’ literary journal.