Sorry, Not Sorry: Curses, Confessions, & Apologies for Things You're Secretly Glad You Did

How do we interrogate meanness, retribution, and anger in our poems? How do we turn rage into light and heat? This virtual craft talk will investigate how we can project our unflinching humanity on the page while remaining likable. We’ll explore various poets who manage to get away with risky confessions, potentially volatile statements, and controversial revelations, all the while asking ourselves, what keeps us as distant readers engaged? When are we turned off? Is there a way we can ethically invoke shock, discomfort, AND compassion toward ourselves, our subjects, and our readers? The last half hour of class will then be devoted to creating our own ethical “mean-person” on the page through a series of guided writing prompts. We’ll have a wonderful time!

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MARIA NAZOS' poetry, essays, and translations are published in The New Yorker, American Life in Poetry, Cherry Tree, Birmingham Review, North American Review, Denver Quarterly, Copper Nickel, Florida Review, Rosebud, TriQuarterly, Mid-American Review, and elsewhere. She served for several years as the editorial assistant for the former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser and his nationally syndicated newspaper column.

Her work has been widely anthologized, including appearing in What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump, edited by Martín Espada (2020 Northwestern University Press) and Nasty Women: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse, edited by  Grace Bauer and Julie Kane (2016, Lost Horse Press.)

A Pushcart nominee, Maria is the author of A Hymn That Meanders (2011 Wising Up Press) and the chapbook Still Life (2016 Dancing Girl Press). Maria has received scholarships and fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Kimmel Harding Nelson Foundation, the University of Nebraska, where she took her PhD in Creative Writing, and the Vermont Studio Center. She lives with two crazy cats and a patient husband in Lincoln, Nebraska. You can find her website here.

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After you register, you will receive an "admission ticket" with the zoom link information on it.

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