The Writer’s Room: Kicking the Bucket

Instructor Mark Gibbons says, “Death. I had a teenage student tell me that he hated poetry because it was “a bunch of old white-guys writing about death!” I think that my obsession with death is why I’m a poet, so that kid was spot-on with me. Now that I am an "old” white guy, death IS the topic. But it always has been, the great unknown waiting for all of us. This class will ask you to consider “death” as a trigger for writing a poem. We’’ll read and discuss a variety of poems dealing with Death.”
Instructor: Mark Gibbons was appointed Montana Poet Laureate, 2021 to 2023. He is the author of eleven collections of poetry. His latest, In the Weeds, was published by Drumlummon Institute, Helena, MT in 2021. He received an Artist Innovation Award in 2013 and an ARPA Grant from the Montana Arts Council in 2022. Gibbons is the current poetry editor of the Montana Poets Series, and he has worked with Poetry Out Loud, the national recitation competition since its inception. He lives in Missoula where he’s taught poetry for the Missoula Writing Collaborative for the past 25 years.