SOLD OUT!
If your would like to be added to the waitlist for this workshop, please fill out the form found here.
We will be accepting scholarship applications until March 21st. See the details below for how to apply.
Total Immersion
A Poetry Workshop
with Mark Doty & Ellen Bass
May 12 – 16, 2025, with an extra feedback session
Online via Zoom
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
—Anton Chekhov
If you want to write images like that “glint of light on broken glass”—precise, clear, and immediately arresting—please join Ellen Bass and Mark Doty at the online Total Immersion Poetry Workshop. We’ll craft poems that combine compelling detail with complex thought to create work that is powerful, authentic, courageous and memorable. Through this process you will find yourself moving in the direction of the poems you don’t know how to write yet.
We will take risks, summoning the courage to go over, under or around the censors that silence us. We’ll approach our experience from new angles to find the poem within the story. We’ll question the stories we think are true and explore the power of not-knowing and discovery.
We will write poems, share our writing, and hear what our work touches in others. We’ll also read model poems by contemporary poets and discuss aspects of the craft. But mainly this will be a writing retreat—time to explore and create in a supportive community. There will also be an extra feedback session two weeks later for you to receive feedback on a poem that you will have had time to revise.
Though the focus is on poetry, prose writers who want to enrich their language will find it a fertile environment.
The workshop is limited to 28 participants.
The Structure of the Workshop
Although this workshop is appropriate for beginning poets, with much support and encouragement offered, it is also recommended for experienced poets, including those who have published books or chapbooks, are teaching poetry, or have simply been working at the craft for a long time.
This is a participatory workshop, so you will be expected to attend all of the sessions. The workshop is not recorded.
This workshop is oriented toward generating new work. We’ll start each day with a talk about some aspect of the craft of writing.
Then there will be time devoted to writing. Unlike workshops where there are multiple short writing prompts, we prefer to schedule longer writing sessions so that there’s time to go deeply into your writing. You may not be actually writing that entire time, but there’s space for writing, reflection, starting off on a whole new topic, maybe taking a short break to refresh yourself and begin again.
Then we’ll meet to share our work. For these sessions, we’ll divide into smaller groups, one led by each teacher (you’ll have the opportunity to work with both teachers in the small groups). Everyone will have a chance to read and to receive responses, encouragement, and support.
On the final consecutive night, there will be a poetry reading by each of the participants.
Two weeks later there will be one extra session, a last group feedback session with either Mark or Ellen to go over a poem that you have revised.
Logistics
Cost: $2000
Workshop Participant Number: Maximum of 28
Workshop Format: This workshop will be held online through Zoom. Handouts for the workshop will be sent by email in advance of the Zoom sessions. The workshop is not recorded, so participants are expected to attend all of the Zoom sessions.
Scholarships for Poets with Financial Need
We are offering two full scholarships for the workshop to poets who have financial need. Unfortunately, we can’t offer every deserving applicant a scholarship, but if you’d like to apply, please email a paragraph describing your financial situation. Also include two of your poems in a Word document or the body of an email. Applications are judged blind, so please do not include your name in the document. But please do give Jen your name, so she knows who you are!
Send the poems to Jen at jen@ellenbass.com by March 21, 2025. With your submission, you must indicate which scholarship you are applying for. In this case, say that it is for “Total immersion”. We have multiple scholarships running at once, so any submissions that do not indicate the scholarship applied for will not be considered.
If you have already attended an online workshop on scholarship within the last two years (this does NOT include the Living Room Craft Talks), you are not eligible to apply for this workshop.
Retreat Schedule
Monday, May 12, 2025
Introductory Session: 2 – 4 pm Pacific Time | 5 – 7 pm Eastern Time
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
Craft Talk: 9 am – 10 am Pacific Time | 12 – 1 pm Eastern Time
Time to Write: 10 am – 2 pm Pacific Time | 1 – 5 pm Eastern Time
Feedback Session: 1:45 – 5 pm Pacific Time / 4:45 – 8 pm Eastern Time
Wednesday, May 14, 2025
Craft Talk: 9 am – 10 am Pacific Time/ 12 – 1 pm Eastern Time
Time to Write: 10 am – 2 pm Pacific Time | 1 – 5 pm Eastern Time
Feedback Session: 2 – 5 pm Pacific Time / 5 – 8 pm Eastern Time
Thursday, May 15, 2025
Craft Talk: 9 – 10 am Pacific Time/ 12 – 1 pm Eastern Time
Time to Write: 10 am – 2 pm Pacific Time | 1 – 5 pm Eastern Time
Feedback Session: 2 – 5 pm Pacific Time / 5 – 8 pm Eastern Time
Friday, May 16, 2025 – Please Note the Time Shifts This Day
Craft Talk: 8 – 9 am Pacific Time/ 11 am – 12 pm Eastern Time
Time to Write: 9 am – 1 pm Pacific Time | 12 – 4 pm Eastern Time
Feedback Session: 1 – 4 pm Pacific Time / 4 – 7 pm Eastern Time
Participant Poetry Reading: 5:30 – 6:30 pm Pacific Time / 8:30 – 9:30 pm Eastern Time
Final Feedback Session with Either Ellen or Mark
During registration, you will be able to tell us your preferences for which date you prefer for your extra feedback session. The options will be on May 29 or June 2 from 11 am – 12:30 pm Pacific | 2-3:30 pm Eastern with Mark Doty. Or May 30 or June 3 from 2 – 3:30 pm Pacific | 5 – 6:30 pm Eastern with Ellen Bass.
This retreat is NOT recorded, so participants should plan to attend all of the sessions.
TO REGISTER
Registration is a 2-part process. Part one is making your payment and part two is filling out a short form. Registration is not complete until both parts are completed, though completing your payment does secure your spot in the workshop.
Payment:
Full payment of the $2000 fee is due with registration. You have the option to pay by credit card or PayPal.
Cancellations and Refunds:
If you find that you cannot attend the workshop, let Jen know as soon as possible and she’ll try to fill your space. If she can fill your space, she’ll refund your payment, minus a $350 administrative fee which is non-refundable. The sooner you let us know, the more likely that we can fill your space.
Questions and Concerns:
If you have any questions or concerns, please email Jen at jen@ellenbass.com.
SOLD OUT!
If your would like to be added to the waitlist for this workshop, please fill out the form found here.
We will be accepting scholarship applications until March 21st. See the details above for how to apply.
MARK DOTY is the author of nine books of poetry, including Deep Lane (April 2015), Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems, which won the 2008 National Book Award, and My Alexandria, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the T.S. Eliot Prize in the UK. He is also the author of four memoirs: the New York Times-bestselling What Is the Grass, Dog Years, Firebird, and Heaven’s Coast, as well as a book about craft and criticism, The Art of Description: World Into Word. Doty has received two NEA fellowships, Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships, a Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Award, and the Witter Byner Prize.
ELLEN BASS’s poetry collections include Indigo, Like a Beggar, The Human Line, and Mules of Love. Her poems appear frequently in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and many other journals. Among her awards are Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The NEA, and The California Arts Council, The Lambda Literary Award, and four Pushcart Prizes. She co-edited the first major anthology of women’s poetry, No More Masks!, and her nonfiction books include the groundbreaking The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse and Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth. A Chancellor Emerita of the Academy of American Poets, Bass teaches in the MFA writing program at Pacific University.