The most challenging thing I find as a poet is finding the needed pressure to create new work. Two of the most productive periods of my poetry life had some element of a deadline. The first period was meeting with a group of good poets each Monday evening at The Poetry Society of America in New York City. The moment the workshop ended, the clock began ticking for the following week. And the second period was the two years I worked on my MFA in poetry at Sarah Lawerence College. You wanted to show up for Marie Howe’s workshop ready to roll!

In this workshop, “Pressure Makes Diamonds,” we will use the pressure of workshopping an original poem and then reading that poem at an open mike that same evening. I will provide prompts and each student will get a typewriter if they would like to experience what it was like pre computers. As a Barnum and Bailey Ring Master would yell out when a rogue elephant dashed for the exits: “The Show Must Go On!”  or in our case: “Poems Must Be Read!”

Joseph Coleman’s poems have appeared in: Esquire, The New Criterion, The New Yorker, The Northern NewEngland Review, Variant Literature, The New Criterion, Casa Vogue.