My first experience with lyric poetry was hardly unique: I was an undergraduate in college when, in a 19th century American Literature class, we were assigned to read Walt Whitman's  Leaves of Grass. Whitman's ability to celebrate everyday experience--riding on a New York City ferry; watching people swim in the ocean; lounging alone on the grass on a summer's day--permanently changed my relationship to poetry. Here was work defined by joy, by gratitude, and by an embrace of lived experience, all accomplished in a direct, unpretentious voice that believed everyday language could be as poetic as a Shakespearan sonnet. 

From the work of Whitman onward, the lyric poem has been a mainstay in American poetry, and for good reason: it is a form that lends itself to prioritizing the intimate, the personal, and the spiritual in a manner that eschews dogma and sweeping generalizations. This workshop will focus on the necessary components to composing a good lyric poem, which include a defined sense of place, an original narrative voice, and an embrace of the transcendent joy to be found in life's daily experiences Through a series of specific prompts, we will spend the week writing, sharing, and discussing our poems with one another in a welcoming, engaging seminar environment. 

Kareem Tayyar's work has appeared in a variety of literary journals, including Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review. His poem, "Two Poets," received the 2022 Atlanta Review International Poetry Prize, and his novel, The Prince of Orange County, received the 2020 Eric Hoffer Prize for Young Adult Fiction. In 2020, he was awarded a Glenna Luschei Poetry Prize and, in 2019, he was a recipient of a Wurlitzer Poetry Fellowship. His next collection of poems, Afternoon Constellations, will be released in fall 2026. He holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of California, Riverside, and he is a Professor of English at Golden West College in Huntington Beach, California.