Renée Schell leads our May P@P with a workshop on sestinas!

Poets@Play is a monthly creative writing workshop hosted by former Santa Clara County Poet Laureate David Perez. Each session features a different guest facilitator—or sometimes David himself—leading hands-on exercises to inspire creativity and new ideas.

How to Do Things with Six Words: The Sestina

Embraced by modern writers from Elizabeth Bishop and John Ashbery to Patricia Smith and Sherman Alexie, the sestina, a poem that plays with a set of six words, is a challenging yet supple and playful form. In this workshop, we’ll read and briefly discuss several sestinas, then choose our own six words to explore the form. We’ll remember that there’s no right or wrong way to write a poem, only different paths, different endings.

About Our This Month’s Facilitator

Renée M. Schell’s debut collection, Overtones was published in 2022 by Tourane Poetry Press. Her poetry appears in New Verse News, Catamaran Literary Reader, Caesura, Naugatuck River Review, and many other journals and anthologies. She was lead editor for the anthology (AFTER)life: Poems and Stories of the Dead. She holds a Ph.D. in German Studies and also taught for seven years at a Title I elementary school. Renée’s work has been nominated for Best of the Net.

No RSVP required. Just show up at 1:00pm

Admission: Free (donations welcome)

📍Location: Markham House @ History Park
635 Phelan Ave, San Jose, CA.

Free parking right outside of the main gate or in the lot at the end of Phelan Avenue (except during some History Park events.)

Once you walk into the park from Phelan Avenue, go straight until the road dead ends, then make a left. Markham House is then the second house on your left. There will be a flag over the steps that reads OPEN.