New Ways to Tell Old Stories: Poems About Families (Margaret Mackinnon)

This seminar will meet in person for 1 session on Saturday, May 10 from 1:30 -5:30 PM. 

Description:

Families are the focus of countless poems by American writers, from Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays” to Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy.” In this one-day seminar, we will look at poems by contemporary writers who take new and interesting approaches to this familiar subject. In reflecting on what makes a successful poem, Robert Frost observed, “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.” The poets whose work we’ll explore all look at family stories in surprising ways. Members of the class will be encouraged to use some of these poems as inspiration for their own work. Our time together will be spent reading and discussing these model poems, along with pieces contributed by those in the seminar.   

About the Instructor:

Margaret Mackinnon is the author of two collections of poetry, The Invented Child (Silverfish Review Press 2013), winner of the 2014 Literary Award in Poetry from the Library of Virginia, and Afternoon in Cartago (Ashland Poetry Press 2022), winner of the Richard Snyder Memorial Publication Prize. Her work has appeared in The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Image, Poetry, Blackbird, and other journals. She attended Vassar College and the University of North Carolina, and she received her MFA in poetry from the University of Florida. She lives with her family in Richmond.