Unlock Your Sonnet: The Restraint of a Fourteen-line Music Box

In this generative workshop we will attempt to write contemporary sonnets - not traditionally rhymed, metered and structured like a Shakespearean or a Petrarchan sonnet - but those with a vestige of the form, fourteen lines with a volta or turn here and there, maybe some internal rhymes. We will look at examples by Diane Seuss, Terrence Hayes, Wanda Coleman, and others, and pay close attention to how they get inventive with the form. Finally, we will follow the discussion with creating our own first and strong drafts of sonnets. To go beyond the tradition, we need to inhabit the ghost of the sonnet. Like the Charles Mingus song, you “better get hit in your” sonnet.

William Archila is the winner of the 2023 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry for his collection S is For. He is the author of The Art of Exile which was awarded the International Latino Book Award, and The Gravedigger’s Archaeology which received the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize. He was also awarded the 2023 Jack Hazard fellowship. He has been published in Poetry Magazine, The American Poetry Review, AGNl, Copper Nickle, Colorado Review, Kenyon Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Missouri Review, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, Southern Indiana Review and the anthologies The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, Theatre Under My Skin: Contemporary Salvadoran Poetry, and The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States. In 2010, he was named a Debut poet by Poets & Writers. He is a PEN Center USA West Emerging Voices fellow. He lives in Los Angeles, on Tongva land. He has work forthcoming in Indiana Review, The Georgia Review, Poetry Northwest and Salamander.

Masks are encouraged while inside our center.

One scholarship will be awarded to a QTPOC/BIPOC L.A.-residing individual who would like to join but does not have the means to do so. Please email us if interested at [email protected].

Workshop attendees are expected to participate in a respectful, constructive, and considerate manner. Beyond Baroque reserves the right to remove individuals from our workshops, virtual or otherwise, if they are not respecting the space, fellow participants, or facilitator.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, 681 Venice Blvd, Los Angeles, United States