NewsSubscribe

Q: What are your personal writing goals at the moment?

Rachelle: Every time I finish a poem I'm afraid it'll be the last poem I write, so I guess my current goal is the same as always: writing another poem, whatever it may be.

Q: What can your potential students expect to gain from your writing lab if they enroll this winter?

Rachelle: Students can expect to approach questions of form playfully—that is, with an emphasis on rules and breaking rules. Why might we want to write or ruin a sonnet? How might a poem move if it were inspired by a basketball game? What might it look and feel like if it were a hand mirror? How can playing around with form open up new ways of thinking, feeling? We'll do daily lessons, conversations, and generative exercises, and on the last day we'll hold a workshop session for revision ideas and peer feedback.

Q: What’s Inspiring you right now?

Rachelle: Spending time in archives and sifting through poets' more ordinary miscellania—lists, letters, and the other things they write down when they think no one's looking. Returning to my favorite poets and books of poems, especially the ones I haven't read in years. Learning the names of wildflowers, specific colors, and celestial bodies and phenomena. Tarot, pop science, new music.