In the first weeks of this year, I participated in a virtual poetry workshop with Anita Skeen. It was so useful to me that I signed up for another workshop, this one on writing the prose poem, with mixed-media artist and poet Lorette Luzajic. She is the editor of an online prose-poetry lit journal, The Mackinaw.

In this workshop, I’m returning to a form I learned early in my writing practice. My friend and mentor David Dunn may have introduced me to prose poems, I cannot recall anymore; but I do know he was writing them in 1980 and that some of the poems in our collaborative chapbook The Swan King are either prose poems or on the verge of being prose poems. Prose poetry was then considered a “new” form and was (& in some quarters, remains) controversial among poets and critics. It sounds self-conflicting: if it is prose, how can it be poetry?

In the decades since I was very new to poetry, reading everything I could find of contemporary work and experimenting all over the place, the prose poem has been much written-about in literary forums and academia and is–mostly–on pretty sturdy footing as a “form” of poetry. I never completely stopped writing prose poems, and a few appear in most of my books. I’ve been writing so many sad lyrical-narrative poems since 2018, however, that I haven’t spent much time really playing with poetry, and play is a huge part of creative thinking. So Lorette Luzajic’s workshop, which gives us a chance to experiment and play, appealed to me.

The workshop has got me thinking about versions and expansions of the form, turned up some exciting new poets to read, and offered amusing prompts that have moved me into ekphrastic, surrealistic, dream-based, and pop-culture themed poems. I have found some surprises in my own work, which is always a reviving feeling.

Also, we are almost at the vernal equinox. My environment is brightening in small ways, which tends to help with enduring the tough stuff.