Exit Strategies: A Craft Talk with Chet'la Sebree

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | A poem is only as strong as all its parts; however, we often put particular pressure on its final lines. Does the poem close with a mic drop? A graceful bow? In this craft conversation, we’ll discuss methods and techniques for how to end a poem. Participants are encouraged to bring a poem for which they’d like to rethink its ending.

Chet'la Sebree is the author of Field Study (FSG Originals, June 2021), winner of the 2020 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Mistress, selected by Cathy Park Hong for the 2018 New Issues Poetry Prize and an NAACP Image Award finalist. Her debut essay collection about her relationship to home, heritage, and belonging through domestic and international travel is forthcoming from The Dial Press in 2025. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Guernica, Kenyon Review, Poetry International, and Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019. She is an assistant professor of English at George Washington University and teaches in the Randolph College Low-Residency MFA program.

Photo credit: Shannon Woodloe