Singing Your Own Song: Knowing and Honing Your Unique Voice

Teachers of creative writing talk a lot about “finding” your voice, as if it’s lost and waiting to be rescued. But what if your voice is something you’ve already got but don’t know how to attentively nurture into a full song? In this writing-intensive generative workshop we will learn the twists and turns of our own unique voices, as well as how to milk their individual strengths and make them work harder for us on the page. During our week together, we will read, discuss, and write towards notions of self-invention and individuality, including revision as a vocal honing tool and workshop as a zone for voice recognition rather than surrender. Our goal is to finish out the week with a bevy of new poem drafts as well as a greater sense of knowledge and security surrounding the voice that is our own particular tool of magic on the page.

Keetje Kuipers is the author of three collections of poetry: Beautiful in the Mouth, The Keys to the Jail, and All Its Charms, which includes poems honored by publication in both The Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, The New York Times Magazine, American Poetry Review, and over a hundred other magazines. Keetje has been a Stegner Fellow, Bread Loaf Fellow, and the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident. She lives with her wife and children in Montana, where she is Editor of Poetry Northwest and a board member at the National Book Critics Circle.