Poetry requires a rigorous and detailed approach to language. It’s a genre marked by compression and constraint with maximum impact as its intention. How, then, does a poet approach longer forms? What craft skills are they bringing to the page no matter the genre, and what of their poetic sensibilities are they leaving behind in order to lengthen the line and fill the page? Is it fact or fiction that poets write the best prose, and why? For April Third Thursday, we’ll be joined by three brilliant poet-writers—Taisia Kitaiskaia, Leticia Urieta, and Vanessa Angélica Villarreal—to explore the joys and challenges of switching from poetry to prose and back. We’ll learn how they approach prose projects and what effect publishing in multiple genres has had on their writing lives. We hope poets and prose writers alike will join us to glean what longer and shorter forms can offer us all. This conversation will be moderated by WLT Board Member Bianca Alyssa Pérez. Buy our panelists books and support indie bookstores! You can find our April Third Thursday booklist here.
