Other Doors: X Ways to Revise a Poem
This course will return in 2025.
Instructor: Holly Wren Spaulding
Other Doors is a course for poets who wonder: What is revision? How do I make this promising draft into a publishable poem?
Bring your work in progress and leave with a packet of poems that you may submit to magazines and literary journals, or even use as the basis for your first poetry collection.
During this hybrid online course, we will meet in Live Video workshops; revise recent work in progress according to guiding principles that are calibrated to your vision and aesthetic; consider the difference between personal writing and the writing we do with an audience in mind; learn about poetic craft; and prepare packets of poems to submit for publication.
Weekly Live Video workshops provide an opportunity to learn in real time, practice new skills, and discuss what interests us as practicing writers. Further learning happens within the course portal where you will find audio and video content, discussions, and replays from our live gatherings.
A Note from Your Teacher
If you’re at all like me, you don't just want to write, you want to write well.
The desire to become good at what you do drives you, and it may also leave you feeling frustrated when you're not sure how to make what you can imagine, a reality.
In my annual revision intensive, Other Doors: X Ways to Revise a Poem, I share the craft lessons that have meant the most to me as a maker of poems and published author.
If you long to share your work with more than your journal or a close friend or two, Other Doors will provide trustworthy guidance and tried and true techniques to elevate your writing to the point where you could send it to editors, read it in public, or even begin assembling your first poetry collection, with more confidence.
What can you do to become a better poet?
What can you do to make your poems publishable?
Let’s find out!
Enrollment opens in mid-August. Class begins October 5.
- Holly Wren Spaulding
What You'll Receive
- 6 weeks of lessons (craft videos, curated reading selections, and revision exercises)
- 6 hourlong workshops, via Live Video, where you can bring your questions and practice new skills, with Holly's support
- A clear understanding of what's involved in submitting your work for publication.
- 1:1 Office Hours with Holly: Bring a single burning question to discuss with her privately in a 15-minute Zoom consultation.
- Other Doors is a prerequisite for Holly's annual manuscript incubator “A Body of Work.” Graduates of this course will be invited to apply to ABOW if they wish.
Important Dates: 2023 session
8/16: Registration opens.
9/28: Course portal opens
10/1-11/5: Lessons released weekly on Sundays
10/5: Live Opening Workshop 2-3 pm EST
10/12: Live workshop 4-5 pm EST
10/19: Live workshop 4-5 pm EST
10/26 Live workshop 4-5 pm EST
11/10 -11/22 Holly offers 1:1 office hours (15 min. per student)
11/2 Live workshop 4-5 pm EST
11/9 Live closing workshop 4-5 pm EST
11/30 Holly's last day in the online discussions
*Students have a full year of access to the course and may download anything they would like to keep forever
This Happens Just Once a Year
Other Doors provides you with the techniques, confidence, and conversations you need to finish your poems well.
Only graduates of Other Doors will be invited to apply to A Body of Work, in which I will serve as your personal editor and creative midwife during a three month manuscript intensive and mentoring program that runs January-March 2024. Fore over a decade, ABOW alumni have gone on to publish poetry collections; attend MFA and PHD programs; teach and edit professionally; receive artist residencies and literary awards; and enjoy other significant accomplishments.
When we finally have a moment to prioritize our creative work we often just want to begin something new, release what's on our mind in a private outpouring, or do what's most familiar to us.
And yet we are also often haunted by piles of would-be poems in notebooks, drawers, and on sagging shelves, leaving us overwhelmed and without a sense of what to do next.
We want the satisfaction of completing a piece of writing and sharing it in some way, but where to begin?
Past experiences may have made us shy away from taking our work seriously, so that we avoid committing to our writing, as though it doesn't deserve true care or attention.
We not have the experience or community that other serious writers have, so we feel alone with this work that feels important yet difficult, even impossible.
We may hesitate to call ourself a poet, even if that is so clearly who we are, because it's how we move through the world. We long for inner congruence and a sense of belonging within a circle of like-minded people who value literature and ideas.
We have aspirations for our work and we know we can't do all of it alone. We are ready to take the next step.
What if you could edit your work based on guiding principles that are UNIQUE to you, your vision, and your aesthetic?
What if after you finished a draft you felt confident in the next steps that will help you move it forward?
What if all that writing you’ve done is the beginning of a body of work?
What if you didn’t have to go it alone?
Other Doors Syllabus
Live gatherings take place on Thursdays from 4-5 pm Eastern Time. Recordings will be provided.
Welcome Week: Orientation
Gathering your work in progress
Course portal opens September 28, 2023
Week 1: How to Make a Better Poem
Guiding principles
Opening Workshop: Oct. 5, 2023
Week 2: The Sounds of Poetry
Voice, music, listening to the draft
Live Workshop: Oct. 12, 2023
Week 3: Brevity, Immediacy, Invisible Ink
What goes in, what stays out, what ripples beyond the page
Live Workshop: Oct. 19, 2023
Week 4: Making Sense
Syntax, meaning, strangeness
Live Workshop: Oct. 26, 2023
Week 5: The Shapes and Spaces of Poetry
Working with the page, breath, your reader's imagination
Live Workshop: Nov. 2, 2023
Week 6: How to Submit Your Work
Connecting with editors and readers, where and how to get published, & other ways to be a poet in the world
Live Workshop: Nov. 9, 2023
*This outline offers a fair preview of what's ahead in terms of topics however we will also explore curiosities and tangents that can't be anticipated before we gather, Live, as a unique cohort. Prepare for some surprises during our time together.
Study Halls:
In addition to our Thursday workshops, there will be at least two Study Halls offered. Time and dates TBD. These will be hosted by Holly's teaching assistant, Heather MacKay Young, and provide space for additional conversations. Attendance is optional but encouraged.
Office Hours:
During November, Holly will open her calendar to students who would like to schedule a consultation where you may bring your burning questions, or perhaps a draft of something new, to discuss privately.
Course Access:
Students have a full year (until September 30, 2024)to enjoy the videos, audios, discussions and documents within Other Doors.
"I signed up for Other Doors this past Fall and it helped blow open my writing practice. I appreciated the opportunity to revise my work in a safe space. Holly's teaching style is so tender and inspiring, and I look forward to continuing to learn from her as well as work alongside this wonderful community you’ve curated through Poetry Forge." Autumn F., 2022 graduate
"In Other Doors, in particular, I learned why and how to start editing my poems. I honestly wasn't that interested in editing before, I was just delighted to be writing poems at all and liked leaving them as they found me. But, something clicked in this course, and I now understand that what finds me is just the start of the creative process. I now truly enjoy editing poems as much or more than writing them. I really appreciated the practical exercises that I will take them with me moving forward. One concept I will also take with me is the idea of merging heart with technique. Oceans Without End grew my heart and Other Doors grew my technique. Kim F., 2022 graduate
"Other Doors has been a joyful odyssey, filled with so much to do and learn—new ideas, new poets, and a wonderful supportive community! I have tried many new things and gained trust in myself, the process, and the reader. I expected to learn a lot about revision, and I did. A pleasant surprise was learning ways to organize my untidy mass of work, contained in handwritten journals, stray pieces of paper, files both physical and digital. I have found techniques to help me manage this overgrown monster. Now I have a sense of direction and no longer fear losing important work and ideas. As my confidence in revision has increased, I feel free to write zero drafts with less restraint." —Nancy N., 2022 graduate
If you're still wondering if this is your time …
This course and will be most useful to those who've taken at least one creative writing class with Holly or someone else recently and are ready to graduate from freewriting for fun to finishing their poems.
Furthermore, it will be advantageous to come to class with at least a few recent poems-in-progress as we will be working on them during class.
Some craft lessons will be delivered via pre-recorded video to allow students to move through the material at their own pace. Live workshops will be dynamic and interactive; plan to attend and do the exercises together.
