What Shines Through:
Writing from Shadow to Joy
Saturday, August 9th, 2025
Poetry • Online • 10am–3pm ET
You are invited to a one-day live online poetry workshop with Ella Peary.
Have you ever wondered how to write poems that are joyful, but not sentimental?
During this generative poetry workshop, we’ll explore joy as something earned, embodied, and illuminated by shadow.
Through this workshop, you’ll uncover and refine poems that hold joy while retaining honesty and complexity. We will also explore how to shape language that resists sentimentality, allowing sincerity to rise through the texture of lived experience.
We’ll also focus on how poetry can move through difficulty toward radiance–tracing the light that emerges when we write with emotional clarity.
Before writing, we’ll explore tools for resisting sentimentality and allowing sincerity to rise through the texture of lived experience. And after writing, we’ll explore strategies for editing that will sharpen the reader’s experience of sincere joy on the page.
The workshop will include a mix of craft instruction, writing time, workshopping, revising, and sharing work. There will be plenty of time to ask questions, and engage in discussions with your instructor. Keep in mind, there will be breaks included, so you can have plenty of time to eat, stretch, etc.
You’ll leave this workshop with three new drafts, one revised piece, and fresh strategies for writing and revising.
For those interested in participating, you’re encouraged to enroll right away.