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Rewilding the Sonnet (or, Reading and Writing Love’s Un/Bound Shape): A Writing Lab with Geffrey Davis

$110.00

the stars/ throw down shanks—: teach the sonnet’s a cell—: now try to escape—

—Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon

Marilyn Hacker has described the sonnet as “a form that invites close engagement, and that engagement often becomes a kind of dialogue with its past and present uses and connotations.” The number of present-day poetry collections that turn to the sonnet (some of them exclusively so) would seem to suggest that this form still has so much to say and teach us about love. In this two-part workshop guided by Geffrey Davis, we will come together to study a range of sonnets—some that are older, some that are newer, some that play within that sonnet’s conventions, some that challenge or break from its traditions in exciting ways, and many that make explicit or implicit use of ecological frameworks to understand the heart forces binding or separating us. Our aim is to all leave poised to further deepen our reading and writing possibilities with the sonnet form. Participants will also be invited to lay some inventive groundwork for a form that might accommodate their own ongoing searches for connection.

Thursdays, February 19 and 26
12:00-1:30 PM Central Time
Live online

the stars/ throw down shanks—: teach the sonnet’s a cell—: now try to escape—

—Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon

Marilyn Hacker has described the sonnet as “a form that invites close engagement, and that engagement often becomes a kind of dialogue with its past and present uses and connotations.” The number of present-day poetry collections that turn to the sonnet (some of them exclusively so) would seem to suggest that this form still has so much to say and teach us about love. In this two-part workshop guided by Geffrey Davis, we will come together to study a range of sonnets—some that are older, some that are newer, some that play within that sonnet’s conventions, some that challenge or break from its traditions in exciting ways, and many that make explicit or implicit use of ecological frameworks to understand the heart forces binding or separating us. Our aim is to all leave poised to further deepen our reading and writing possibilities with the sonnet form. Participants will also be invited to lay some inventive groundwork for a form that might accommodate their own ongoing searches for connection.

Thursdays, February 19 and 26
12:00-1:30 PM Central Time
Live online

This is a live, participatory lab and it will not be recorded. A meeting link will be emailed a few days prior to the lab. Cancellations must be made 48 hours prior to the lab and will be charged a $10 cancellation fee. Partial scholarships may be available. Apply here by 12/22/2025.

Geffrey Davis is the author of three full collections of poetry: One Wild Word Away (2024), Night Angler (2019), and Revising the Storm (2014), winner of the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize and a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Finalist. He is also the author of the chapbook Begotten (URB Books, 2016), coauthored with F. Douglas Brown. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Crazyhorse, Mississippi Review, New England Review, New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, PBS NewsHour, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. A native of the Pacific Northwest, Davis teaches for the University of Arkansas’s MFA in Creative Writing & Translation and for The Rainier Writing Workshop low-residency MFA program.