Part of The Poetry Society of New York's Weekly Virtual Workshop Series.

With poet Iain Haley-Pollock!

The Revelatory Moment: Poems of Epiphany:

Poems often develop through indirection, by hinting or gesturing at their meaning, by circling and circling without any obvious arrival. This is an intriguing element of poems—it leaves room for mystery, for the intellectual play of interpretation; it keeps us coming back for more—but this indirection can also be a bedeviling element of poetry. Occasionally, having a speaker step to stage front and say exactly what they mean is refreshing and powerful. One form of direct approach in poems is the epiphany or the revelation, when the usual indirection of poetry gives way to a moment of sudden, stunning insight. In this generative workshop, we will examine poems by Rainer Marie Rilke and Lucille Clifton, that include varying degrees of revelation. After a discussion of the poems, workshop members will write epiphanic poems based on a prompt and, time permittig, will have the opportunity to share their work.

About the Instructor: Iain Haley Pollock is the author of three poetry collections, Spit Back a Boy (2011), Ghost, Like a Place (Alice James, 2018), and the forthcoming All the Possible Bodies (Alice James, September 2025). His poems have appeared in numerous other publications, ranging from American Poetry Review to The New York Times Magazine and The Progressive. Pollock has received several honors for his work including the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, a 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Poetry, the Bim Ramke Prize for Poetry from Denver Quarterly and a nomination for an NAACP Image Award. He serves as Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY, where he also edits the literary journal Inkwell.

* *This workshop will take place on Zoom.**