The Poetics of Power and Play

Tom Laichas is author of Three Hundred Streets of Venice California (FutureCycle Press, 2023), Sixty-Three Photographs at the End of a War (3.1 Press, 2021), and Empire of Eden (The High Window Press, 2019). He holds a Ph.D. in History from UCLA, and taught U.S. and world history courses for over thirty years at the high school and college levels. His recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Plume, The Los Angeles Times, The Irish Times, Blue Unicorn, and elsewhere. The featured American poet at the High Window Review (UK), his work has also won awards from Jabberwock Review, Puerto del Sol, and Prime 53. He lives with his family in Venice, California.

Lynne Thompson was Los Angeles’ 4th Poet Laureate and received a Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. In 2024, She represented the City of Los Angeles at the Marathon Poétique at the Paris Olympic Games. Thompson is the author of four collections of poetry: Beg No Pardon, winner of the Perugia Press Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Associations New Writers Award; Start With A Small Guitar (What Books Press); Fretwork, winner of the 2019 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize selected by Jane Hirshfield; and, Blue on a Blue Palette, published by BOA Editions in April 2024. The recipient of multiple awards, Thompson has taught for the University of Reno Low Residency Program, Napa Valley Writers Conference, and the Central Coast Writers Conference, among others. Recent work appears in Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares and the anthology Dear Yusef: Essays, Letters and Poems For and About One Mr. Komunyakaa, to name a few. A lawyer by training, Thompson serves on the Boards of The Poetry Foundation and the Los Angeles Review of Books and is the current President of Cave Canem.

Handouts will be issued in conjunction with the workshop with the expectation that students will read in advance and participate in class discussions.

For Lynne Thompson’s workshop: The Making of a Poem (edited by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland), Personal Best (edited by Erin Belieu and Carl Phillips), and any volume of Best American Poetry (pay particular attention to the poets’ comments following the poems).