This workshop will be devoted to tackling a range of poetic forms – list, lyric, documentary, collage, erasure, epistolary, sound-based, prose, performative, and other shapes and experiments – as well as exploring how contemporary poetry and poetics make us think differently about language: its uses, its limits, and its capacity to change the way we experience the world. Students will write in response to weekly creative prompts, read and discuss work by contemporary and visiting writers, and workshop each other's writing throughout the semester before producing a final portfolio of approximately 15 pages of work as well as a statement of creative practice. Newcomers to poetry are welcome, but permission of the instructor is required: please send 1-3 pages of writing (in any form) to blochj@writing.upenn.edu.