Reading Poems Like an Editor | A Workshop with Luke Hankins

Reading Poems Like an Editor: In this class we’ll focus on evaluating poems while inhabiting the mindset of an editor with limited space and lots of material vying for publication. An essential aspect of reading poems like an editor is paying close attention to the linguistic and technical features of the poem that determine the poem's impact on its readers. Each participant will submit two poems in advance of the workshop for all participants to read. The workshop leader will select one poem by each participant for group discussion. Our focus will be on describing the existing architecture of the poem, and then attempting to articulate ways in which that architecture might be modified or reconsidered in order to maximize the poem's intended effects on its readers.

Luke Hankins is the author of two poetry collections, Radiant Obstacles and Weak Devotions, and a collection of essays, The Work of Creation. A volume of his translations from the French of Stella Vinitchi Radulescu, A Cry in the Snow & Other Poems, was released by Seagull Books in 2019. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in a wide variety of periodicals, including 32 Poems, American Literary Review, Image, New England Review, Poetry International, Verse, World Literature Today, and The Writer's Chronicle. Hankins serves as an Associate Editor at Asheville Poetry Review and he is the founder and editor of Orison Books, a non-profit literary press focused on the life of the spirit from a broad and inclusive range of perspectives.

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