Brooklyn Poets Craft Lab: "Darkness Within Darkness: The Nocturne Poem"

Save $15 during early registration through March 17th! Members save an additional $25 anytime.

We're all familiar with nocturnes—poems that happen at night, night songs wherein transformation occurs—but how does one access the night mind to write the poem? Or describe the spiritual encounters of the unknown? What haunts us at night? What thoughts of death linger when the clock strikes midnight? What fantasies do we give ourselves permission to indulge in? And what does darkness reveal about love? On the border of sleep and wakefulness, we find ourselves not only in the presence of mystery and the supernatural but also the source of our own shadows. By adapting our eyes to the dark, we may find the poem that leads us to the answers we seek.

In this craft lab, we will sharpen our own senses as poets and explore how to create the atmosphere of night by heightening the use of sensory details, imagery, and tone. What do we hear that we cannot see in the dark? What do we smell? What visions do we imagine? We will examine poems that cry out from despair, poems that roam city streets with restlessness or wander toward the edge of desire. We will learn to name the darkness within darkness, also known as the truth. 

Come prepared to write and go inward as we discuss poems by Taylor Johnson, Li-Young Lee, Federico García Lorca, Aimee Nezhukumatathil and more.

All participants will have access to a cloud recording of the craft lab for one month afterward.

We can provide a limited amount of financial aid. To apply, please fill out this form on our website by March 24th at 11:59PM. We strongly encourage writers from historically underserved and marginalized communities to apply, including (but not limited to) writers of color, LGBTQ+ writers, writers with disabilities and women writers. You’ll hear back from us by April 1!

About the teacher

Monica Sok is the author of A Nail the Evening Hangs On (Copper Canyon Press, 2020) and Year Zero, winner of a 2015 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Elizabeth George Foundation, Hedgebrook, MacDowell, National Endowment for the Arts, Saltonstall Foundation and the Wallace Stegner Program at Stanford University. She lives in New York City and teaches at Barnard College at Columbia University. Her poems have appeared in the Believer, Paris Review, Poetry, New England Review and the Washington Post.

Closed captions for the event will be available via Zoom. To request additional accommodations or more information, please contact us at bkp@brooklynpoets.org. Note that by attending you agree to abide by our code of conduct below.

Brooklyn Poets Code of Conduct

Brooklyn Poets will not tolerate any instances of discrimination, harassment or abuse in conjunction with any of our programs. Respect and consideration for others, both within and outside our programs, are core values to be upheld by all participants. Discrimination against and/or harassment of community members on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, national origin, religion, age, marital status, veteran status or any other factor is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Program participants are expected to adhere to all federal, state and local laws and regulations. Should a board or staff member, independent contractor, volunteer or program participant be found to violate any aspect of the organization’s code of conduct, Brooklyn Poets reserves the right to dismiss them from the program. Consequences may include, but not be limited to, dismissal from the current activity, suspension, ineligibility for all future activities, and/or loss of payment or fees. If you have any issues to report, please do not hesitate to contact anyone on our Conduct Committee and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

Executive Director r kay: kay@brooklynpoets.org
Board Director Miller Oberman: miller.oberman@gmail.com