The Final Draft – A Creative Writing Workshop

Tuition: $425 | YIVO members: $325**

This is a live, online course held on Zoom. Enrollment will be capped at about 15 students. All course details (Zoom link, syllabus, handouts, recordings of class sessions, etc.) will be posted to Canvas. Students will be granted access to the class on Canvas after registering for the class here on the YIVO website. This class will be conducted in English, and any readings will be in English.

Instructor: Irena Klepfisz

Is there such a thing as a “final draft”? Or is this simply a contradiction in terms? This workshop will focus on the process of completing a poem and understanding when we should stop working on it.

Many of us have had the experience of writing something that comes to us in almost perfect form. This kind of first draft needs either no or very few minor edits or revisions. Probably more common is the experience of working on a text and then reworking it and then reworking it again. We simply cannot bring ourselves to put it away because it's far from what we had envisioned when we first started writing. Should we continue trying to refine it? Or should we put it away and accept failure?

There is no formula to writing poetry. But there are questions we can ask whose answers will help us not only understand when we're finished with a poem but will also move us forward into our next piece of writing. In the workshop, we will raise and try to answer these questions. In addition to analyzing poems from the workshop reader, participants will have the opportunity to present texts in progress or texts considered final.

Course Materials:
The instructor will provide all course materials digitally throughout the class on Canvas.

Irena Klepfisz is a Jewish lesbian poet, essayist, activist, and teacher. Her most recent collection of poetry spans five decades: Her Birth and Later Years: New and Collected Poems 1971-2021. In 2022 the collection was a finalist for the Jewish Book Council's Award in Poetry and the Publishing Triangle's winner of the Audre Lorde Lesbian Poetry Award.

**Become a member today, starting at $54 for one year, and pay the member price for classes! You’ll save on tuition for this course and more on future classes and public programs tickets.