What does history look like in verse? How do we shape current events according to the narrative of *our* living?

Join us to explore the intersection of poetry and journalism, where your voice can turn current events into powerful verse.

Tell It Like It Is: Writing Verse Journalism is a transformative 4-week generative poetry writing course designed to explore how poets narrate news stories through their unique voices, personalizing current events and sharing vulnerability with readers. This approach to journalism emphasizes the poet's voice, offering an intimate and often provocative lens through which to view the world.

We will delve into the works of iconic poets such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Alice Walker, June Jordan, and Sonia Sanchez. The course is open to writers of all levels and culminates with advice on submitting poems to literary magazines.

Each session will feature an open mic segment, encouraging students to share their writing and receive constructive feedback from classmates.

All class meetings will be held via Zoom. The link to join your Zoom classroom will be provided on the morning of your class. Please check spam folders if you do not receive an email confirmation upon registration. For more information on how to download or use Zoom, please click here.

Meet Your Instructor:
Camille Hernandez

Camille Hernandez is the Poet Laureate of the city of Anaheim. She is the author of the bestselling book The Hero and the Whore. Her poems are in So to Speak, FIYAH, Braving the Body, Spoken Black Girl Magazine, and Anaheim Poetry Review. She’s a mentee in AWP’s Writer to Writer Mentorship Program, inaugural fellow of Roots.Wounds.Words, and a current fellow of The Watering Hole.

Course Takeaways

• Identify ways to use different poetic forms to speak on events
• Learn how to use current events to write new poetry
•  Acquire the seeds to build your own verse journalism index
•  Editing and revision tools to enhance your work
• Encouragement, feedback, and publishing advice

Course Skeleton

• Week 1- What is Verse Journalism? We'll dive into the history of verse journalism, its roots in Black women's truth telling, and the literary devices used to amplify the stories
• Week Two: Intimacy and Truth telling - How can we use the intricate vulnerability of relationships to highlight current events? We'll look at the ways in which letters, DMs, and Google searches can become poems
• Week Three: In the Garden of Ancient wisdom keepers- We'll explore ancient poetic forms as journalism
• Week Four: Revise the Work, not the History- We'll end using poetry revision strategies to help us build on our work and send it out for publication

We offer full refunds for cancellation with written notice up until 7 days before your class start date. From 6 days to more than 24 hours before class begins, we offer a 25% refund. If you drop a class less than 24 hours before the class begins or after it has started, you are ineligible for a refund.