The Spark—poem generation workshop
“News from the Clinic”: Hospital Poems
Thursday, May 22, 2025, 1-3 pm US ET (6-8 pm UK)
Although no one wants to end up in a hospital, they can give us some of our most intense and memorable experiences.
From the beginning of life to its end, hospitals are a natural setting for powerful dramas and strong emotions, whether events go well or badly—leading to chilling fears or blissful relief, devastating losses or overwhelming gratitude. Our times there often become occasions that we most want to process, record, or share, so it’s easy to see why hospitals make rich material for poetry.
In this month’s Spark, we’re going to look at how to make deeply felt poems about your own hospital experiences. Whether it’s staying in hospital yourself, undergoing a surgery or procedure, visiting a loved one, or working in a hospital, we’ll explore how you can both record these events and transform them, evoking the physical reality while also exploring the deeper emotional truth. This month we’ll also have a special focus on using metaphor, since this is an especially appropriate tool for conveying the intensity, and sometimes unreal feeling, of hospitals and what happens there.
So I hope you’ll join us, to turn the emotional power of hospital into poems that speak.
Included are:
Discussion of various approaches to writing poems set in, or about, hospital
3 example poems to learn from
3 specific writing prompts—2 to write in the workshop, and 1 for afterward
Writing time
Brief feedback.
Places are limited to 10 people.
“News from the Clinic”: Hospital Poems
Thursday, May 22, 2025, 1-3 pm US ET (6-8 pm UK)
Although no one wants to end up in a hospital, they can give us some of our most intense and memorable experiences.
From the beginning of life to its end, hospitals are a natural setting for powerful dramas and strong emotions, whether events go well or badly—leading to chilling fears or blissful relief, devastating losses or overwhelming gratitude. Our times there often become occasions that we most want to process, record, or share, so it’s easy to see why hospitals make rich material for poetry.
In this month’s Spark, we’re going to look at how to make deeply felt poems about your own hospital experiences. Whether it’s staying in hospital yourself, undergoing a surgery or procedure, visiting a loved one, or working in a hospital, we’ll explore how you can both record these events and transform them, evoking the physical reality while also exploring the deeper emotional truth. This month we’ll also have a special focus on using metaphor, since this is an especially appropriate tool for conveying the intensity, and sometimes unreal feeling, of hospitals and what happens there.
So I hope you’ll join us, to turn the emotional power of hospital into poems that speak.
Included are:
Discussion of various approaches to writing poems set in, or about, hospital
3 example poems to learn from
3 specific writing prompts—2 to write in the workshop, and 1 for afterward
Writing time
Brief feedback.
Places are limited to 10 people.
“News from the Clinic”: Hospital Poems
Thursday, May 22, 2025, 1-3 pm US ET (6-8 pm UK)
Although no one wants to end up in a hospital, they can give us some of our most intense and memorable experiences.
From the beginning of life to its end, hospitals are a natural setting for powerful dramas and strong emotions, whether events go well or badly—leading to chilling fears or blissful relief, devastating losses or overwhelming gratitude. Our times there often become occasions that we most want to process, record, or share, so it’s easy to see why hospitals make rich material for poetry.
In this month’s Spark, we’re going to look at how to make deeply felt poems about your own hospital experiences. Whether it’s staying in hospital yourself, undergoing a surgery or procedure, visiting a loved one, or working in a hospital, we’ll explore how you can both record these events and transform them, evoking the physical reality while also exploring the deeper emotional truth. This month we’ll also have a special focus on using metaphor, since this is an especially appropriate tool for conveying the intensity, and sometimes unreal feeling, of hospitals and what happens there.
So I hope you’ll join us, to turn the emotional power of hospital into poems that speak.
Included are:
Discussion of various approaches to writing poems set in, or about, hospital
3 example poems to learn from
3 specific writing prompts—2 to write in the workshop, and 1 for afterward
Writing time
Brief feedback.
Places are limited to 10 people.
