In this two-hour workshop, teens will have the opportunity to bring physical copies of a work in progress (a poem or a short piece of prose) to share and gather constructive feedback from the instructor and their peers. Designed to be pressure-free and rooted in creativity, this is a time where the group will help each piece become more like itself, while encouraging the writer to hone, shape, and grow their personal voice.
Note: This class is scheduled to take place in-person at the Nashville Public Library’s downtown branch. The library requires all people to wear masks when inside the building. All Porch instructors have been fully vaccinated. We will be meeting in StudioNPL, which is on the 3rd floor next to the teen space. It’s a big room with lots of gadgets—you can’t miss it. (If you park in the library parking garage, stamp your ticket at the front desk to get 90 minutes free.)
Meg Wade is a National Poetry Series finalist and a former Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin's Creative Writing Institute. Her chapbook, Slick Like Dark, won the 2017 Snowbound Chapbook Award and is now out from Tupelo Press. Meg has been the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize and is a co-curator of Be Witched, a literary and arts event series. You can find her poems online, as well as various print journals and anthologies. She lives and writes in Nashville, Tennessee.
"Meg Wade was so encouraging and enthusiastic as a teacher. She was clearly so passionate about the materials, and was able to discuss the craft deeply and sharply. She lead workshops with incisive critiques that helped me reflect on my own work in new ways that have opened up new avenues for exploration of my art. Thank you!"
"Meg presented the material and models with great enthusiasm and created a really innovative exercise. She is so knowledgeable about poetry, but she knew just how much to feed us so that we could apply it to our own writing as a start."
"Meg Wade packs a lot of learning and writing into her classes. Meg's choice of examples and our discussion deepened my understanding of prose poetry. The prompt and subsequent discussion of our writing inspired several of us to continue working on the pieces we began. This was an informative and motivating workshop, and Meg's style of facilitating is welcoming and skilled."