Hitting a New Note: Musical Forms for Poetry Writing (Section 2)
with Alina Stefanescu 

Online class: 5 weeks
3/11 - 4/12
Class begins: Monday, March 11
Weekly Live Virtual Meetings: Mondays, 8 PM EST
Sliding scale registration fee: $50 to $250

Fugues, sonatas, ballads, blues stanzas, the bop—all human history gives us an active dialogue between music and poetic forms. This class uses music theory and poetic forms as an entryway into poetry writing. Students will borrow compositional techniques to write poems that inhabit soundscapes, including explorations of polyphonics, voicing, and "scoring silence". By studying both poetry and music,  participants will create at least 8 new poems and share work with the instructor and each other for feedback. Readings and listenings will include Marina Tsvetaeva, Paul Celan and Ilya Kaminsky, Afaa Michael Weaver, Kevin Young, Taije Silverman, John Cage, J. S. Bach, and others. This 5-week class is perfect for both beginning poets and seasoned writers looking to discover a fresh approach to their craft.

Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama with her partner and several intense mammals. Recent books include a creative nonfiction chapbook, Ribald (Bull City Press Inch Series, Nov. 2020) and Dor, which won the Wandering Aengus Press Prize (September, 2021). Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Books Prize (April 2018). Alina's poems, essays, and fiction can be found in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, World Literature Today, Pleiades, Poetry, BOMB, Crab Creek Review, Best American Poetry 2022 and others. She serves as poetry editor for several journals, reviewer and critic for others, and Co-Director of PEN America's Birmingham Chapter. She is currently working on a novel-like creature. More online at www.alinastefanescuwriter.com.