CRW 3311 Spring 2018 Thacker

Recent advances in neuroscience are allowing us to better understand what happens in the brain when we read. For writers, even beginning writers, such advances are a gold mine for thinking through how a poem can be made, what poetry can do, and how readers can be changed by language arranged as marks on a page or as sounds in the air. In this class we’ll build a brain-based foundation of writing as we compose weekly poems, discuss and analyze a wide range of craft techniques, and revise work for a final portfolio. No prior understanding of poetry or neuroscience is necessary, and course concepts will be easily transferrable to other genres. Our main goal will be twofold: 1) to demystify the writing process by empowering you to understand the “whys” behind writing guidance, and 2) to stock you with an array of tools and concepts you can adapt to any writing situation as you continue to invent beyond our classroom.