The Poetry Chapbook

In this course we will consider the form of the poetry chapbook. At around 15-30 pages (shorter than a full-length single-author collection of poetry), the chapbook is its own delightful form which often allows a poet to bring together a small set of poems that might share formal elements or might orbit a specific topic, theme, or narrative arc. Some chapbooks are more playful or experimental than the same poet’s full-length books. Some poets’ chapbooks become the seeds of future full-length books. In this course we will read and discuss an eclectic set of chapbooks by diverse contemporary poets, and we will work toward completing chapbooks of your own by the end of January, workshopping drafts along the way.



Margaret Ray is the author of GOOD GRIEF, THE GROUND (BOA Editions, 2023), which won the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize and was a Lambda Literary Awards finalist. Her chapbook, SUPERSTITIONS OF THE MID-ATLANTIC was selected by Jericho Brown for the 2020 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship Prize. She is a Middlebury alum./