Radical Revision: A Poetry Workshop
While revision and its processes are a cornerstone of all writing, in poetry the focus must extend beyond basic craft elements--the poem must also feel alive. On this subject, Kim Addonizio writes: "A patient lies on a steel table, while everyone—practiced surgeons and amateurs—sharpens their instruments. Let’s suppose your poem is on the table. How do you keep from killing it?" For this course, you’re encouraged to bring drafts that have stymied your best efforts. Together, we’ll examine strategies for revision and discuss first and final drafts by a range of poets. You’ll learn valuable approaches to revision that will inform your writing choices beyond our time together in this workshop. This course for anyone who's ever felt demoralized by writing; this course is for all of us.
Where: Foound, Rue Jean-Dossier 7, 1201, Geneva, Switzerland
Date: October 11, 2025
Time: 10:30-16:30
10:30 - 13:00 Workshop | 14:00 - 16:30 Critiquing session*
Derek JG Williams is an American writer. His debut collection of poems, Reading Water (2025), was selected by Eduardo Corral as the winner of the Lightscatter Press Prize. He is also the author of Poetry Is a Disease (Greying Ghost, 2022), a nonfiction work on the genesis of artistic practice. Derek holds a doctorate in English and Creative Writing from Ohio University, and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. His poems and prose have been published in Pleiades, Best New Poets, The Writer’s Chronicle, Plume, Sugar House Review, Barrow Street, Banshee, Salamander, andPrairie Schooner, among others. He lives near Zurich with his family.
