As climate change rages, as our carbon footprints expand, as more and more folks become climate refugees, as more and more animals disappear or stumble into extinction, ecopoetry that bears witness to these tragedies, explores them and troubles them, becomes more and more needed, more imperative. In this generative workshop, after a brief discussion differentiating ecopoetry and nature poetry, participants will have the opportunity to trope off of, remix, and reimagine poems by Camille Dungy, Donika Kelly, Craig Santos Perez, Brenda Hillman, and others so that they can add their voices to the chorus of poets calling to us to act, change, and be better for our present moment and for the future.

*One scholarship will be awarded to a QTPOC/BIPOC L.A.-residing individual who would like to join but does not have the means to do so. Please email us if interested at info@beyondbaroque.org

Workshop attendees are expected to participate in a respectful, constructive, and considerate manner. Beyond Baroque reserves the right to remove individuals from our workshops, virtual or otherwise, if they are not respecting the space, fellow participants, or facilitator.

About the Facilitator

Douglas Manuel was born in Anderson, Indiana and now resides in Long Beach, California. He received a BA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University, an MFA in poetry from Butler University, and a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. His first collection of poems, Testify, won an IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for poetry, and his poems and essays can be found in numerous literary journals, magazines, and websites, most recently Zyzzyva, Pleiades, and the New Orleans Review. He has traveled to Egypt and Eritrea with The University of Iowa’s International Writing Program to teach poetry. A recipient of the Dana Gioia Poetry Award and a fellowship from the Borchard Foundation Center on Literary Arts, he is a Bayard Rustin Fellow at Whittier College and teaches at Spalding University’s low-res MFA program. His second poetry collection, Trouble Funk, will be out in spring of 2023.