Classes
Come take a class with me! You can register for upcoming classes when they’re available below. I take payment through Paypal or Venmo. Email me to confirm registration, and then I will send you a link to make payment.
Hugo House Writing with the Furious Flower Poets with Anastacia Reneé
This class has a new start date & end date: Wednesdays, May, 8, 2024 – June, 12, 2024, no class 6/5/2024
Furious Flower is the nation's first academic center for Black poetry and is committed to ensuring the visibility, inclusion, and critical consideration of Black poets in American letters. In this class, we'll engage with Furious Flower archives to analyze the impactful legacy of Gwendolyn Brooks, Jayne Cortez, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, and Sonia Sanchez. We'll focus on the writing breadth of each poet, engage with each poet’s voice, interrogate format and structure, and generate work that seeks to be in conversation with Furious Flower poets.
CAVE CANEM Spring 2024 Regional Workshop (New York City)
Far Out: The Poets Mixed-Tape with Anastacia-Reneé
March 25 – May 20, 2024
Mondays, 6 p.m. – 9 p.m. (ET) | Public Reading May 29, 2024 at 7 PM
RSVP for the Public Reading
What differentiates a “good” poem from a deeper poem bursting with poetic lineage and legacy? What characteristics nod to a well-crafted and unforgettable poem? What’s the dividing line between a mediocre song and a classic jam which elicits nostalgia, joy, grief or hope in the listener? What songs do you repeatedly que up as part of your internal mixed tape? What poems are indelibly 3-D printed on your brain?
As a poetry cohort, participants will deeply discuss (and delight) in the fused outcomes of constructing, scaffolding, deconstructing and experimenting with new ways of approaching poetic devices on the page while keenly listening to the sounds of: Sun Ra, Nina Simone, Alice Coltrane, Betty Davis, Sza, Minnie Ripperton, Sweet Honey and the Rock, Lauryn Hill, Donnie Hathaway, Stevie Wonder, P.M. Dawn and Fertile Ground. Participants will use these songs as the foundation for creating brand new experimental poems.
In nine weekly sessions, poets will look to music as a guiding light towards, taking risks and opening creative doors that elevate forms that already exist or by creating new forms influenced by the mixed tape. Workshop participants will end each class with a draft and study forms such as: The Nines, Haibun, The Bop, Epistolary, The Duplex, Persona, Documentary, Memoir Poetry and The Eintou.
In the tenth week of the workshop, the cohort will celebrate their work by presenting a public reading.
Poetry Urgent Care Clinic
Got a broken stanza? A sprain in your format? A blistered crown of sonnets? Random writing symptoms? Bring 1-2 poems to my Poetry Urgent Care Clinic
between the hours of 4-7pm Pacific/7-10pm Eastern on Tuesdays in a 30-minute time slot. Together we will come up with a solid diagnosis towards a healing revision.
January Clinic Dates:
Tuesday
1/3 4-4:30, 4:30-5:00, 5:00-5:30, 5:30-6:00, 6:00-6:30, 6:30-7:00
1/10 4-4:30, 4:30-5:00, 5:00-5:30, 5:30-6:00, 6:00-6:30, 6:30-7:0
1/17 4-4:30, 4:30-5:00, 5:00-5:30, 5:30-6:00, 6:00-6:30, 6:30-7:00
1/31 4-4:30, 4:30-5:00, 5:00-5:30, 5:30-6:00, 6:00-6:30, 6:30-7:00
February Clinic Dates:
2/7
2/21
2/28
*To make an appointment for the clinic email anastaciarwriter@gmail.com to book your time slot! ($20)
Past Classes
Remote 6-Week Workshop: Anastacia-Renee: Crying Out Loud
6 Wednesdays | Oct 11 - Nov 15 2023 | 6-8:30pm
Crying Out Loud
We will examine overarching themes, hybridity, historical nuances, technique, and writing with courage from Jamaica Kincaid, Zora Neale Hurston, Audre Lorde, and Edwidge Danticat. Discussion will include intersection(s) and entry points of: race, culture, and sexuality and how we identify so deeply with Audre Lorde when she said, “There’s always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself—whether it’s Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc.—because that’s the piece that they need to key in to.” Workshop participants will write a piece of work that demonstrates courageous hybrid writing through the lens of: love, grief, or anger while anchored in joy.
Click here to watch Anastacia-Renee’s Hard Hat Reading!
Workshop: Affirmations from The Body with Anastacia-Reneé
Nov 17, 2022 6:00 PM CST // Zoom
Description: As a community, we will bravely confront negative self-chatter along with pop culture’s non-affirming impact on our minds and bodies. We will ground ourselves in the pages of Audre Lorde’s, “The Cancer Journals,” and Sonya Renee Taylor’s, “The Body is Not an Apology.” We will fully inhabit our bodies as we write micro-nonfiction and affirm our bodies with a Body Haibun to counteract messages of internalized disdain we’ve received over time and collectively, we will create a powerful manifesto for our present and future bodies of 2022 and beyond.
6-Week Online Poetry Workshop: The Gifts of the Past
Tuesdays, March 29 - May 3 2022 3-5 p.m. PT 6-8 p.m. ET 12-2 a.m. +1 CET 2022 - 10 spots available
The Ghanaian word Sankofa is often depicted by a long-necked-heron bird looking back at an egg. The Adinkra symbol means “to retrieve,” “look back,” “go back to” or “fetch.”
In this class, best for writers with some writing workshop experience, we’ll go back to spend quality time with writing ancestors Audre Lorde, Pat Parker, June Jordan, and Gwendolyn Brooks and thoughtfully discuss concepts and themes as well as, deeply analyze their poetry. Next, we’ll bring this information with us as we closely read, discuss, and shadow the work of Patricia Smith, Toi Derricotte, and Rita Dove. A part of each week’s discussion will be attempting to establish a working definition and understanding of hybrid poetry, as well as developing a weekly writing ritual using generative creative prompts as our altar. Each writer will then respectfully and sacredly use the work of all six writers as a guiding foundation to create three of their own new hybrid poems.
REGISTER FOR THIS CLASS VIA THE CATAPULT WEBSITE
Monday P-Funk
$150 per student
Email: anastaciarwriter@gmail.com to confirm your registration
** All classes held on zoom & zoom links sent the evening before classes begin.
May 3rd 3:00-4:30 pm Pacific Time
May 10th 3:00-4:30 pm Pacific Time
May 17th 3:00-4:30 pm Pacific Time
May 24th 3:00-4:30 pm Pacific Time
May 31st 3:00-4:30 pm Pacific Time
We will begin each class with a collective 3-minute dance party. I’ll be the DJ, we’ll all play the same song muted in our own spaces but, stay on-camera to dance! Once we are warmed up, we will generate new poems using a series of writing prompts that will help us to write about self-care, freedom, and living our personal dream. We’ll be guided, by both dead and contemporary poets. You’ll leave every class with a new piece of writing, a renewed sense of writing discipline and a prompt to go! In class five we will revise and polish at least one poem.
*If you want to cue up your songs early, here’s our writers Monday P-Funk playlist:
Respect Yourself, The Staple Singers
Everyday People, Sly & The Family Stone
It’s Your Thing, The Isley Brothers
Lovely Day, Bill Withers
I'll Take you There, The Staple Singers
Sorry Not Sorry: Writing Through Anger to Get to The Other Side
Week Long Writing Intensive (Poetry and Prose)
$75 per student
Email: anastaciarwriter@gmail.com to confirm your registration
*All classes held on zoom & zoom links sent the evening before classes begin.
April 19th 3:30-4:30
April 20th 3:30-4:30
April 21st 3:30-4:30
April 22nd 3:30-4:30
In this weeklong writing intensive, we will write about the things that keep us awake at night, the questions we want answers to, the fears we are forced to face and the apologies we believe we deserve. We will acknowledge our collective and individual anger and make joy our home base. We’ll write Haibun’s
(both documentary and memoir) poems, 9’s Memoir poems, Epistolary poems, Persona poems and root our writing practice in writing prompts and strategies to combat writers block.
Thursday Jazz Brunch
$100 per student
Email: anastaciarwriter@gmail.com to confirm your registration
**All classes held on zoom & zoom links sent the evening before classes begin.
May 6th 11:00-12:30
May 13th 11:00-12:30
May 20th 11:00-12:30
May 27th 11:00-12:30
* All Genres
We will begin each class with a collective 7-minute vibe out-silent-sing-along or head-nod meditation. I’ll be the DJ, we’ll all play the same song muted in our own spaces but, stay on-camera to vibe out together! Once we are warmed up, we will generate new pieces of writing using a series of writing prompts. We’ll be guided, by musicians and writing ancestors as well as contemporary artist, musicians and writers. You’ll leave every class with a new piece of multi-genre writing, a renewed sense of writing discipline and a prompt to go! In class four we will revise and polish at least one piece of work.
*If you want to cue up your songs early, here’s our writers Thursday Jazz Bruch playlist:
Feeling Good, Nina Simone
Sunday Kind of Love, Etta James
Aint Nobody's Business If I Do, Billie Holiday
Turiya and Ramkrishna, Alice Coltrane