A panel discussion led by Karla Linn Merrifield, Colleen Powderly and George Steele, on the special challenges and opportunities of writing long poems.

“Long poem” here means “book-length poem.” Most poets spend their time on short poems, rarely, if ever getting to the third page of a poem. But a few, including the poets on our panel, feel compelled to take on a larger challenge, to commit much more time and effort to one long project. How can this compulsion be explained? Even those of us who have never tried a long poem can guess that length must be the least interesting of the differences between eighty and two pages. What, perhaps to their surprise, did the poets learn about writing the long poem? Are there problems they feel they haven’t yet solved? Will they try another long poem and, if so, what will they do differently? Come to this panel and learn the answers to these questions and much better ones that will occur to you as you listen and think.

After the main program we’ll have our usual workshop from 3:00 to 4:00 Bring 8 copies of a poem you are working on for our group workshops that run after the program (from 3:00 to 4:00 pm).