Poetry MFA Program

Julie Agoos, Program Coordinator

Since its inception, the Brooklyn College Master of Fine Arts Program in Poetry has balanced a firm grounding in the history and tradition of the craft with cutting-edge experimental writing. Moderately priced and highly selective, this two-year program offers intensive workshops (limited to ten students), private tutorials, and courses in the history and craft of the genre.

Attracting a diverse student body from all across the country, it has graduated such writers as John Yau, Sapphire, Paul Beatty, David Trinidad, Star Black, Karen Kelley, Tom Devaney, and Anselm Berrigan. Brooklyn's "experimental tradition" is best exemplified by the late-modernist masters John Ashbery and Allen Ginsberg, who for many years taught in the program. Other teachers have included Mark Strand, William Matthews, Ann Lauterbach, Douglas Crase, David Shapiro, C. K. Williams, Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, Joan Larkin, and most recently, Ron Padgett and Joshua Clover. At present, the permanent staff includes Julie Agoos, author of Property (2008), Calendar Year (1996) and Above the Land (1987), for which she won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award; and Marjorie Welish, author of The Windows Flew Open (Burning Deck, 1991), Casting Sequences (University of Georgia, 1993), The Annotated "Here" and Selected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2000), Word Group (Coffee House Press, 2004), and Isle of the Signatories (Coffee House Press, 2008).

TALK TO A STUDENT

If you have questions you'd like to ask students in Brooklyn College’s program, please feel free to contact any of the following, all of whom are currently or recently enrolled:

Almeida, Nora Lisa - nora968@yahoo.com
Childers, Jodie – jodiechilders@gmail.com
Nowitz, Abe – abe.nowitz@gmail.com
Sondheim, Joanna- joanna.sondheim@gmail.com
Miller, David – thesesignals@gmail.com
Gabb, Vanessa – vanessamariagabb@gmail.com
Reeck, Matthew - msreeck@yahoo.com
Sanders, William - wfsanders76@yahoo.com
Motika, Stephen – stmotika@gmail.com
Saed, Zohra – Zohrasaed@yahoo.com
Wei, Yun – yunwei8@gmail.com