The Strange Shape of the Poem with Sabina Khan-Ibarra

What happens when a poem refuses a single shape?

In this four-week generative poetry course, students will explore contemporary poetic forms that move beyond the traditional lyric. Through readings, discussion, prompts, and in-class writing, we will experiment with fragmented poems, prose poems, collage, modular structures, glossary poems, instruction poems, documentary forms, visual interruption, and hybrid techniques. This class focuses less on “mastering” form and more on discovering how structure itself can create emotional movement, tension, surprise, and resonance. We will read work by poets such as Anne Carson, Terrance Hayes, Jenny Xie, Danez Smith, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Carl Phillips, Mary Ruefle, and others.

This is a highly generative class open to poets, prose writers, hybrid writers, and anyone interested in expanding their approach to language and structure.

Students will:
* generate new work each week
* experiment with contemporary and hybrid poetic forms
* explore fragmentation, repetition, and visual structure
* learn how structure can create emotional movement
* read and discuss innovative contemporary poets
* leave class with multiple drafts and new approaches to poetic form

Sabina Khan-Ibarra is a Pashtun Muslim American poet, writer, and educator whose work appears in Anomaly, SWWIM, Rising Phoenix, and iO Literary, and has been recognized by CRAFT and the SmokeLong Award for Flash Fiction. Her poetry collection, What My Mouth Holds, is a two-time semifinalist. She also teaches at Litquake and San Diego Writers Ink, where her classes focus on image, emotional architecture, fragmentation, and contemporary literary forms. She serves as Director of Rooted & Written, a fellowship and conference program centering BIPOC writers.