The Poem as Container with Sabina Khan-Ibarra

How does a poem hold emotional weight?

In this four-week generative poetry course, students will explore how contemporary poets create emotional resonance through image systems, repetition, compression, silence, pacing, and associative movement. Rather than focusing on traditional form, this class investigates how emotional pressure shapes structure and language.

Through readings, discussion, prompts, and in-class writing, students will generate new work rooted in recurring imagery, emotional tension, obsession, memory, and embodied experience.

We will read work by poets such as Marie Howe, Ada Limón, Ilya Kaminsky, Sharon Olds, Aracelis Girmay, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, and Mark Doty.

This class is ideal for poets and hybrid writers interested in creating work that feels emotionally layered, image-driven, and structurally alive.

Students will:
* generate new poems
* explore repetition, silence, pacing, and compression
* develop stronger image systems and emotional architecture
* learn strategies for creating resonance without over-explaining
* read and discuss contemporary poetry
* finish class with multiple drafts and revision strategies

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.