Workshops & Classes

The Main Course: Writing Poems About Food Through the Lens of the Haibun

Brooklyn Poets (online). May 19–June 16, 2026.

"Love! What is love
if not knotted in garlic? Child, we move through graves
like eels, delicious with our heads first, our mouths
agape. Our teeth: little needles to stitch a factory of
everything made in China. You ask: Are you hungry?
Hunger eats through the air like ozone. You ask: What
does it mean to be rootless? Roots are good to use as
toothpicks. You: How can you wake in the middle of
a life?"
–Jane Wong

The question, “How do you cook your rice?” or “Are you hungry?” can elicit nostalgia and multi-layered answers tied to our memories. In this five-week, generative online workshop, we'll peel apart our cultural, familial, spiritual and communal connections and disconnections to food. We will read and discuss food poetry written by: Ntozake Shange, Jane Wong, Eileen Miles, Crystal Wilkenson and others. We’ll use the Haibun format as a container for our food-driven poetry. Participants will craft three poems using aspects related or rooted in food. In one session we will "cook" together by writing responses to recipes, historical facts about spices and sharing stories about food. One session will be devoted to workshopping our poems.

Class sessions will meet synchronously via Zoom, and assignments, poems and critiques will be shared via Wet Ink. Register here.

Yearlong in Poetry II: Advanced Workshop with Iain Pollock and Anastacia Renee

Hugo House (online): October 9, 2025 - June 18, 2026

You’ve built a foundation. You’ve written poems. (Maybe you’ve even published a few!) Now you’re ready for what comes next: experimentation, risk, and the wide, strange world of what poetry can be. This yearlong cohort is for writers ready to stretch. Over nine months, you’ll explore poetic movements from 1918 to the present, read beyond the institutional canon, and write alongside contemporary and ancestral voices who refuse to stay in one lane.

We’ll lean into work by poets of color. Multilingual poets. Queer and trans poets. Experimental poets. Poets who write fearlessly about the hard stuff. Think: Joy Harjo, June Jordan, Jericho Brown, Ada Limón, Khaled Mattawa, Yalie Saweda Kamara, KB Brookins—writers who challenge poetic form from the inside out. Each week begins with a generative prompt and a close reading of a poem—unpacking the craft, voice, and choices that make it come alive. From there, you’ll write from intuition, inquiry, contradiction, experimentation, and joy. We’ll workshop regularly—bringing in new drafts, old experiments, unfinished sparks. This is our space for creative rigor, radical permission, and lasting community. 

You’ll leave with 10+ new poems, 30+ drafts or starts, a deeper poetic lineage, and a cohort of writers who will challenge and champion your voice—long after class is over. Perfect for intermediate to advanced writers with a strong foundation in poetry fundamentals (including image, form, sound, metaphor, line, and voice) and previous workshop experience. Especially recommended for graduates of Bill Carty's Yearlong in Poetry, Anastacia Renee's Poetry Intensive, and/or Leigh Sugar's Yearlong in Poetry II: Workshop courses.

Required text for this class: Students will be required to procure a copy of The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House by Audre Lorde (ISBN-13 978-0241339725).

This class focuses on:

  • Craft & Technique: Focuses on improving writing skills, exploring elements like voice, line, and image.

  • Close Reading & Analysis: Engages deeply with published texts to examine craft, language, and style.

  • Workshop: Students submit work and receive feedback from the instructor and/or classmates.

Hugo House Writing with the Furious Flower Poets with Anastacia Reneé

This class has a new start date & end date: Wednesdays, May, 8, 2024 – June, 12, 2024, no class 6/5/2024

Furious Flower is the nation's first academic center for Black poetry and is committed to ensuring the visibility, inclusion, and critical consideration of Black poets in American letters. In this class, we'll engage with Furious Flower archives to analyze the impactful legacy of Gwendolyn Brooks, Jayne Cortez, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, and Sonia Sanchez. We'll focus on the writing breadth of each poet, engage with each poet’s voice, interrogate format and structure, and generate work that seeks to be in conversation with Furious Flower poets.

CAVE CANEM Spring 2024 Regional Workshop (New York City)

Far Out: The Poets Mixed-Tape with Anastacia-Reneé
March 25 – May 20, 2024
Mondays, 6 p.m. – 9 p.m. (ET) | Public Reading May 29, 2024 at 7 PM
RSVP for the Public Reading

What differentiates a “good” poem from a deeper poem bursting with poetic lineage and legacy? What characteristics nod to a well-crafted and unforgettable poem? What’s the dividing line between a mediocre song and a classic jam which elicits nostalgia, joy, grief or hope in the listener? What songs do you repeatedly que up as part of your internal mixed tape? What poems are indelibly 3-D printed on your brain? 

As a poetry cohort, participants will deeply discuss (and delight) in the fused outcomes of constructing, scaffolding, deconstructing and experimenting with new ways of approaching  poetic devices on the page while keenly listening to the sounds of: Sun Ra, Nina Simone, Alice Coltrane, Betty Davis, Sza, Minnie Ripperton, Sweet Honey and the Rock, Lauryn Hill, Donnie Hathaway, Stevie Wonder, P.M. Dawn and Fertile Ground. Participants will use these songs as the foundation for creating brand new experimental poems. 

In nine weekly sessions, poets will look to music as a guiding light towards, taking risks and opening creative doors that elevate forms that already exist or by creating new forms influenced by the mixed tape. Workshop participants will end each class with a draft and study forms such as: The Nines, Haibun, The Bop, Epistolary, The Duplex, Persona, Documentary, Memoir Poetry and The Eintou. 

In the tenth week of the workshop, the cohort will celebrate their work by presenting a public reading.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBMt8lIMkXM

https://hugohouse.org/product/yearlong-in-poetry-ii-advanced-workshop/

https://brooklynpoets.org/workshop/p/the-main-course

Remote 6-Week Workshop: Anastacia-Renee: Crying Out Loud

6 Wednesdays  |  Oct 11 - Nov 15 2023  |  6-8:30pm

Crying Out Loud

We will examine overarching themes, hybridity, historical nuances, technique, and writing with courage from Jamaica Kincaid, Zora Neale Hurston, Audre Lorde, and Edwidge Danticat. Discussion will include intersection(s) and entry points of: race, culture, and sexuality and how we identify so deeply with Audre Lorde when she said, “There’s always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself—whether it’s Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc.—because that’s the piece that they need to key in to.” Workshop participants will write a piece of work that demonstrates courageous hybrid writing through the lens of: love, grief, or anger while anchored in joy.

Click here to watch Anastacia-Renee’s Hard Hat Reading!

Poetry Urgent Care Clinic

Got a broken stanza? A sprain in your format?  A blistered crown of sonnets? Random writing symptoms? Bring 1-2 poems to my Poetry Urgent Care Clinic 

between the hours of 4-7pm Pacific/7-10pm Eastern on Tuesdays in a 30-minute time slot. Together we will come up with a solid diagnosis towards a healing revision. 

Workshop: Affirmations from The Body with Anastacia-Reneé

Nov 17, 2022 6:00 PM CST // Zoom

Description: As a community, we will bravely confront negative self-chatter along with pop culture’s non-affirming impact on our minds and bodies. We will ground ourselves in the pages of Audre Lorde’s, “The Cancer Journals,” and Sonya Renee Taylor’s, “The Body is Not an Apology.” We will fully inhabit our bodies as we write micro-nonfiction and affirm our bodies with a Body Haibun to counteract messages of internalized disdain we’ve received over time and collectively, we will create a powerful manifesto for our present and future bodies of 2022 and beyond.

6-Week Online Poetry Workshop: The Gifts of the Past

Tuesdays, March 29 - May 3 2022 3-5 p.m. PT 6-8 p.m. ET 12-2 a.m. +1 CET 2022 - 10 spots available

The Ghanaian word Sankofa is often depicted by a long-necked-heron bird looking back at an egg. The Adinkra symbol means “to retrieve,” “look back,” “go back to” or “fetch.”

In this class, best for writers with some writing workshop experience, we’ll go back to spend quality time with writing ancestors Audre Lorde, Pat Parker, June Jordan, and Gwendolyn Brooks and thoughtfully discuss concepts and themes as well as, deeply analyze their poetry. Next, we’ll bring this information with us as we closely read, discuss, and shadow the work of Patricia Smith, Toi Derricotte, and Rita Dove. A part of each week’s discussion will be attempting to establish a working definition and understanding of hybrid poetry, as well as developing a weekly writing ritual using generative creative prompts as our altar. Each writer will then respectfully and sacredly use the work of all six writers as a guiding foundation to create three of their own new hybrid poems.

Monday P-Funk 

$150 per student

We will begin each class with a collective 3-minute dance party. I’ll be the DJ, we’ll all play the same song muted in our own spaces but, stay on-camera to dance! Once we are warmed up, we will generate new poems using a series of writing prompts that will help us to write about self-care, freedom, and living our personal dream. We’ll be guided, by both dead and contemporary poets. You’ll leave every class with a new piece of writing, a renewed sense of writing discipline and a prompt to go! In class five we will revise and polish at least one poem.  

*If you want to cue up your songs early, here’s our writers Monday P-Funk playlist: 

  • Respect Yourself, The Staple Singers 

  • Everyday People, Sly & The Family Stone 

  • It’s Your Thing, The Isley Brothers 

  • Lovely Day, Bill Withers  

  • I'll Take you There, The Staple Singers

Sorry Not Sorry: Writing Through Anger to Get to The Other Side

Week Long Writing Intensive (Poetry and Prose)

 In this weeklong writing intensive, we will write about the things that keep us awake at night, the questions we want answers to, the fears we are forced to face and the apologies we believe we deserve. We will acknowledge our collective and individual anger and make joy our home base. We’ll write Haibun’s
(both documentary and memoir) poems, 9’s Memoir poems, Epistolary poems, Persona poems and root our writing practice in writing prompts and strategies to combat writers block. 

Thursday Jazz Brunch

We will begin each class with a collective 7-minute vibe out-silent-sing-along or head-nod meditation. I’ll be the DJ, we’ll all play the same song muted in our own spaces but, stay on-camera to vibe out together! Once we are warmed up, we will generate new pieces of writing using a series of writing prompts. We’ll be guided, by musicians and writing ancestors as well as contemporary artist, musicians and writers. You’ll leave every class with a new piece of multi-genre writing, a renewed sense of writing discipline and a prompt to go! In class four we will revise and polish at least one piece of work.  

*If you want to cue up your songs early, here’s our writers Thursday Jazz Bruch playlist: 

  • Feeling Good, Nina Simone

  • Sunday Kind of Love, Etta James 

  • Aint Nobody's Business If I Do, Billie Holiday  

  • Turiya and Ramkrishna, Alice Coltrane