Fall Virtual Poetry Intensive: Hope Punk Poetry

When: September 16 - October 21st, 2026 (Wednesdays, 7:00–9:00 PM EST)

Duration: 6 Weeks

Format: Virtual, via Zoom

Workshop Overview:

In this generative writing intensive we will explore the potential of poetry as a tool of resistance. Each session will begin with a short generative writing exercise and reading example pieces. We will write into questions such as: what can poetry do for us and our world? How do we acknowledge and delve into the realities of violent systems without giving in to nihilism? How can we write into possibility and hope?

In this class we will delve into hope as resistance and revolution. We will look at how poetry can combat the nihilism of White Supremacy culture and be used as a tool to cultivate hope. How can we use poetry to imagine new realities and build the foundations of a new future? How do we build something new and dismantle the old simultaneously? Taking inspiration from multiple mediums and genres, we will explore the ways form can serve as a tool to challenge conventions and imagine new possibilities.

About the Instructor:

Zoë Luh (she/they) is a poet, artist, and disability doula living on unceded Tiwa lands. They believe in poetry as a necessary tool for collective liberation and reclamation of bodily autonomy. As a poet, she feels it’s her duty and joy to use writing as a liberation practice and a tool for radical imagining.

Zoë graduated from Oberlin College with a BA in Comparative American Studies, and a minor in Studio Art. She published her first book of poetry, [and time erodes like thunder], with Assure Press in 2020, and is featured in Death Rattle/Oroboro, Blue Mesa Review, Saranac Review, In Between Spaces, a disability-centered anthology published with Stillhouse Press, and more. They were selected by Carolina Ebeid as a runner up for the 2024 American Literary Review Awards. They are currently a reader for Wildscape Lit, and are working on a project interrogating the connections between disability-based violence and global struggles for liberation.