Poetry Revision Intensive
Finish more poems!
Five Days, Live on Zoom
October 20-25, 2025
3:00 until 4:30 pm EST
each day with Holly Wren Spaulding
Do you dream of transforming your notebooks into publishable poems? Or at the very least, completing the gesture? If you want to make strong work, this intensive is for you. X Ways is about recognizing the possibilities within your unfinished drafts, freely iterating, and finding momentum through the act of doing the work rather than daydreaming about it.
In this boot camp style series, award winning writer and founder of Poetry Forge, Holly Wren Spaulding will share the essential editorial strategies and revision techniques that shaped her journey from aspiring writer to published author.
During this intensive you'll learn how to see and hear your work in progress, gain fresh perspective on drafts you might be feeling discouraged about, distinguish between personal and public-facing writing, and master craft techniques that you will carry into your independent writing life. Most importantly, if you show up consistently, you will transform languishing drafts into polished work, worthy of future readers.
X Ways is ideal for poets who want to finish more poems, gain confidence around the revision and editing process, and prepare their best work for print or other public occasions. Although recordings will be provided, the true power of this process will be found in the Live sessions where we can do the work together, address concerns as they arise, and receive encouragement.
If you have piles and files of unfinished poems that you still believe in, but you're just not sure where to begin, this revision intensive is for you. Join us!
Note: If you are considering Holly's manuscript incubator, A Body of Work, this course or another revision focused workshop such as Other Doors, is a prerequisite. Reach out if you have questions.
Syllabus
Monday, October 20 X Possibilities
Tuesday, October 21 Embodied Revision
Wednesday, October 22 Ghost Lines & Invisible Ink
Thursday, October 23 Small is Beautiful
Friday, October 24 Beginnings & Endings
All workshops are taught Live from 3:00 until 4:30 pm ET on Zoom. You are strongly encouraged to attend class Live as this is where much of the revision work happens. Videos (from another session; same content) and worksheets will be available each day, within the course portal, for your convenience. Access lasts 30 days.
Space is limited.
Worthwhile Work
"Revision is work. What feels loose at first becomes structured if one listens closely to the instructions. It's a difficult balance to strike and Holly’s guidance strikes it." —Heather M.
Transformative Process
"I now truly enjoy editing poems as much or more than writing them. The tools Holly gave us helped us understand different ways to edit, and turned off some protective features in my brain that allowed me to see my poems more clearly."—Kim F.
Practical and Approachable
"I had never really known how to edit my poems before this class, but it has been something I've longed to learn. The practical lessons were so easy to implement into my work."—Gina K.
"I came as a secret poet, and I go forth as a poet. So much so that I can't stop writing, yet I feel like I continue forth with a confidence I almost didn't know I was lacking."—Elisabeth K.
Surprisingly Joyful
"I have grown so much as a person who can now revise her own work. My relationship with my poetry and poetic language has changed! This is so exciting because I have been at this for a long time, but I was a bit stuck." —Nancy D.
"As my confidence in revision has increased, I feel free to write my early drafts with less restraint. X Ways has been a joyful odyssey, filled with so much to learn—new ideas, new poets, and a wonderful supportive community!"—Nancy N.
How it Works
We meet for 90 minute sessions on Zoom for five fulfilling days.
During our Live Zoom sessions, there will be a craft talk and corresponding revision exercises, and ample time in which to work on one or more of your own drafts, ask questions, and grapple together with the specific demands of this process.
The video recordings will be available for one month only, with an encouragement that you complete the coursework in a focused manner, ensuring you complete what you have set out to do within a reasonable time frame.
This course fulfills the prerequisite for A Body of Work, Holly's annual poetry chapbook manuscript incubator. Applications for that course open in late October. Join the interest list to be notified when that happens.
"If a teacher told me to revise, I thought that meant my writing was a broken-down car that needed to go to the repair shop. I felt insulted. I didn't realize the teacher was saying, 'Make it shine. It's worth it.' Now I see revision as a beautiful word of hope. It's a new vision of something. It means you don't have to be perfect the first time. What a relief!"—Naomi Shihab Nye
About the Teacher
Holly Wren Spaulding is an interdisciplinary artist, creative writing teacher who received her M. Phil. from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. Holly is the author of Between Us (2022), Familiars (2020), If August (2017), and Pilgrim (2014), all published by Alice Greene & Co. St. Brigid Press published a letterpress edition of Fire in 2021. Her chapbook, The Grass Impossibly, received the Michigan Writers Cooperative Press Award for Poetry in 2008, selected by Fleda Brown. She is currently at work on a poetry collection inspired by her encounters with the Outer Hebrides, and a non-fiction project, How to Begin, which argues for the ethical and spiritual benefits of a regular writing practice. Spaulding's writing has appeared in various anthologies, journals, and magazines, including Michigan Quarterly Review, Witness, Poetry Northwest, The Ecologist. New York Times, Hummingbird, and elsewhere. She is the founder and artistic director of Poetry Forge, which she founded in 2012. Holly enjoys collaborating with visual artists, composers, dancers, and filmmakers and is an amateur letterpress printer. She enjoys making ceramics and working in her flower garden. She lives in southern Maine. www.hollywrenspaulding.com