In this class, we’ll examine poems that make effective use of humor, and do some writing to help you free your inner Monty Python. To help in the process, please bring (# of class members) copies of a poem not your own that strikes you as seriously funny. In the afternoon, we’ll discuss a poem of yours—preferably one that either uses humor, or that you think could use more of it. Please bring copies of your poem for this workshop.
Instructors
Charles Harper Webb, called by Lifescape “Southern California’s most inventive and accessible poet,” has published twelve books of poetry, including Reading the Water, Liver, Tulip Farms & Leper Colonies, Hot Popsicles, Amplified Dog, Shadow Ball: New and Selected Poems, What Things Are Made Of, Brain Camp, and his most recent, Sidebend World, forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2018. A Million MFAs Are Not Enough, a collection of Webb’s essays on the craft of poetry, was published by Red Hen Press in 2016. Webb’s awards in poetry include the Morse Prize, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Felix Pollock Prize, and the Benjamin Saltman Prize. His poems have appeared in distinguished journals and anthologies, including American Poetry Review, Paris Review, Iowa Review, Yale Review, Harvard Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, Tin House, Poets of the New Century, Best American Poetry, and The Pushcart Prize. A former professional rock musician and psychotherapist, he is the editor of Stand Up Poetry: An Expanded Anthology, and recipient of a Whiting Writer’s Award, a fellowship from the Guggenheim foundation, and the CSULB Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award. He is Professor of English at California State University, Long Beach, in the MFA Program in Creative Writing.
A prolific writer, Ron Koertge was published widely in the ’60s and ’70s in such seminal magazines as Kayak and Poetry Now. His first book, The Father Poems, was published in 1973, and was soon followed by many more, including poetry, prose, novels-in-verse, and fiction for teenagers. His most recent book, Vampire Planet, was released in 2016 from Red Hen Press. Ron is the recipient of grants from the N.E.A. and the California Arts Council, has poems in two volumes of Best American Poetry (1999 and 2005), and is a 2017 Pushcart Prize winner. His fiction has been honored by the American Library Association, and two novels have received PEN awards. After teaching for thirty-seven years at the city college in Pasadena, he retired and now teaches at Hamline University in their low-residency MFA program for Children’s Writing. He currently lives in South Pasadena, California, with his wife, Bianca Richards.