Sarah Rose Nordgren | Writers.com https://writers.com/instructor/sarah-rose-nordgren Your voice is a gift. Share it. Mon, 08 Dec 2025 00:24:18 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.3 Find Your Poetic Wellspring: Writing the Poems that Matter https://writers.com/course/find-your-poetic-wellspring-writing-the-poems-that-matter Tue, 14 Oct 2025 02:15:31 +0000 https://writers.com/?post_type=product&p=48043 Discover—or rediscover—your poetic vision, and the root of what drives you to write your most powerful poetry.

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]]> As poets, we are drawn to make meaning through language. From this core inspiration, we also need to forge a vital, ongoing connection to what drives our poetry today, as we are now. In this course, you will discover—or rediscover—your poetic vision, and the wellspring of your most powerful poetry.

During our time together, you will explore your personal “flood subjects”—the obsessions and resonant sources that exist deep inside you and which fuel you to write, practice opening your eyes and other senses to the world around you, probe your fears and dreams, and find poetry in the language that surrounds you every day. Our goal will not simply be to create more “publishable” poems (though that will likely follow as well), but to write more poems that matter: poems charged with energy, urgency, and power, and perhaps some of what the poet Linda Gregg referred to as “luminosity.”

Each week, I will provide a written introduction to the week’s theme, links to brief readings that will provide inspiration for your own work, a discussion question for you to engage with to connect with your classmates and deepen your engagement with the course topics, and a thoughtfully-designed writing prompt for you to generate a new poem. You will also receive nuanced and encouraging feedback on each of your poems from me as well as your workshop group, and write feedback for your classmates as well.

At the end of this course, you will come away with six new poems of your own, a more nuanced understanding of your poetic subjects, and practice seeing the world with the eyes of a poet.

Note: There will be no new materials or assignments during the week of December 24–30, 2025. Because of this break, the 6-week course will take place over a 7-week span.

Who This Course is For

Open to poets of all experience levels, this course welcomes beginners who wish to see the world through the eyes of a poet and experienced writers looking to reconnect with the deeper reasons behind their work.

Learning and Writing Goals

Learning Goals

  • Deepen awareness and understanding of your own poetic subjects.
  • Become a “noticer” and awaken your senses to the world around you.
  • Practice more effectively delivering the essence of your poems through language.
  • Refine your use of image.
  • Overcome creative blocks by tapping into new subject matter.

Writing Goals

  • You will generate six new poems.
  • You will also come away with feedback on these new poems that you can use to revise them as well as inform your future writing.

Weekly Syllabus

Week 1 - The Art of Finding

This week we will get to know one another and the workshop process, and will also start practicing “the art of finding” by tuning into our senses so that they can perceive the world around us more fully.

Week 2 - Sources and Flood Subjects

Every writer needs a subject. Some of the inspiration for our poems comes from what we observe around us, but much of it also comes from inside of us–our memories, dreams, intellectual interests, and griefs. Developing awareness of these sources is what we’ll focus on in the assignments this week.

Week 3 - Fear

Fear can be hard to talk about, but it is often an invisible driver behind many of our life decisions, not to mention our dreams and preoccupations. This week we’ll spend some time examining our fears and how they might fuel, rather than limit, our poems.

Week 4 - The Language of Poetry

One of the defining features of poetry is its exploration of language as multi-sensory. This week we will continue to develop our relationship with the physicality of language by exploring how the sounds and rhythms of language impact and reflect what we have to say.

Week 5 - Dreams and Duende

We have our own personal sources and obsessions, but there are also more universal and cultural signs and symbols that we, as poets, can access. This week we will explore superstitions, symbols, dreams, and the sacred in poetry.

Week 6 - Finding Found Poetry

Found poetry is about feeling surprised, and about working with a purposely limited set of materials to explore limitless possibilities. This week we will attune ourselves to the language that surrounds us every day.


Find Your Poetic Wellspring: Writing the Poems that Matter
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