A workshop w. sustained focus & intention
Our Beyond Baroque Manuscript Lab
This Spring, I welcomed seven poets into the inaugural Beyond Baroque Manuscript Lab. We spent eight beautiful weeks together book-shopping (whole-book-workshopping) and generating new poems and creating a brain-trust of community outside of the MFA model. With visits from writer Adrie Rose and poet & translator C.D. Eskilson, and a close reading of Taylor Johnson’s first book, Inheritance, my students explored structural and thematic possibilities for their in-progress books and also learned about the process of going on submission. In a celebration of our work together, I hosted a culmination reading event at Meadow Fig.
Here are 5/7’s of my students at the Meadow Reading.
This Lab is also a space for my own growing editorial ambition to take shape, and it was my great good fortune to get to give advice on how to make these manuscripts sing! I am thrilled to see where these future-books will find a home, because readers will be changed by these poets’ candor, rigor, and personal revelation.
Do you have a book of poems waiting on your hard drive or thrumming in myriad notebooks or nesting in your heart? Here is your invitation. This January, a 2nd cohort for a new iteration of the Manuscript Lab will convene in-person for another eight weeks of exploration, workshop, and friendship. Applications for the program are now live and due December 2, 2025. Please reach out to me with any curiosities and questions. I would love to work with you.
Here are a few testimonials for the program that make my eyes misty:
Sara Ellen Fowler’s Manuscript Lab at Beyond Baroque is a rare opportunity to workshop with sustained focus and intention. The lab invites you to step back from individual poems and look more broadly at your voice, your style, your overarching narrative, and ultimately the motivations that drive your writing. Sara is an extraordinary poet and an equally gifted workshop leader. She fosters an environment that encourages each writer to move toward their best and truest work. I entered the lab with a handful of rough poems and left with the focus, confidence, and tools to complete my manuscript.The weekly sessions, along with the generous feedback from Sara and a talented group of writers, challenged me to grow as a poet and a reader, and deeply inspired my craft.
Poet Kristina Ortega
I have always danced around the poems I write and the part of me that identifies as a ‘poet.’ Working with Sara gave me permission to embrace that aspect of my identity and to take my work seriously. The consistency and generosity of the other students in the workshop was tantamount in completing my manuscript, and I walked away with many new friends and collaborators. I cannot recommend this experience more--if you’re on the fence, and especially if you’re scared, bite the bullet and give yourself a chance.
Poet Hannah Schoettmer
My experience at the Manuscript Lab profoundly altered my relation to writing as practice and taught me how to talk about my own work and the work of others in a critical and invested manner. These conversations were only able to flourish due to the openings Sara crafted through her careful consideration of space and process. In Sara’s navigation of the structure and sequence of a full length collection, engagement was grounded in the real question of creating an object and allowing it to exist. The lab not only deeply impacted my relation to poetry but gave the building blocks for a creative community.
Poet Fabrizzio Torero
If you want to connect in kindness with other passionate writers, Sara’s Manuscript Lab is for you. Sara is exceptional at making spaces of utter and complete caring and truth-telling—about your work, about you as a person. I found her to be sharply insightful while still honoring original voice, as she shepherded each of our writerly strengths. Sara is particularly wonderful when it comes to sequencing a book. She peppers the program with planned author visits on interesting subjects, as we examine the good bones of a successful poem and manuscript. At the Beyond Baroque Manuscript lab, I encountered a chorus of voices that proved invaluable for my development as a poet and it was an amazing place to see what really lands. Sara is also wonderful when it comes to creating community—she organized a student reading for us at Meadow Fig, a gorgeous event space in Highland Park. I cannot say enough about Sara’s generosity. Under her guiding care, I have walked away with a much stronger iteration of my project and I am so grateful to have been part of this family of poets.
Poet Julían Delacruz
