TPF

January 10

Poetry as Protest:

Writing for Human Rights

with Janel Galnares

(virtual)

January 17

The Language of Location

with Wyatt Welch

(hybrid)

January 24

The VERB: Uses and Beauty

with Veronica Golos

(virtual)

All Tucson Poetry Festival events are free and open to the public.

All donations support the 2026 Festival.

Workshop Descriptions

Poetry as Protest: Writing for Human Rights

with Janel Galnares

When the news feels like a siren, a poem can feel like a small, clear bell. In this generative workshop, we’ll create work that writes toward our collective and individual responsibility in protecting human rights, drawing inspiration from Langston Hughes, Ilya Kaminsky, Naomi Shihab Nye, Audre Lorde, Nazim Hikmet, and other poets who invite us to think about complicity, empathy, and action within oppressive systems. We’ll end the workshop by linking our new stanzas together to create a collaborative renga. Beginners and long-time writers are welcome to join us as we risk vulnerability, experiment with writing difficult topics, and see what our language can build together in a time of crisis. Embrace the power of words in a session that delves into the intersection of poetry and social activism.

Janel Galnares (she/her) is a poet and teacher from Tucson, Arizona living in Chicago. She has been teaching creative writing in secondary and post-secondary schools for over 10 years and is editor-in-chief for Harpy Hybrid Review. She was a Poet-in-Residence for the Chicago Poetry Center in 2023. Her work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Portable Gray, Red Ogre Review, Poetry International, among others.

The Language of Location with Wyatt Welch

"Please, put the book uphill on the desk."

This is a hybrid event taking place in person at Write on 4th Community Center and streamed live for virtual attendees. Inside this poetry-writing workshop, we’ll begin with an exploration of how different languages discuss space (as bodily-orientation, as visible versus invisible, as temporal metaphor, as emanating from a landform) to get participants to rethink the space of English. We will also explore how prepositions themselves in English move emotional and imagistic weight. This linguistics tour will offer participants some fresh ways to rethink where things are.

Wyatt Welch (they/them) is a local Tucson poet and English teacher. Welch earned an MA in Linguistics from the University of Florida, and as a linguist, is interested in phonology and language revitalization movements. Welch's debut book of poetry, Capitalism Calls Poetry Lazy, was released in 2022 by FlowerSong Press with many of these poems having previously been published in some really exciting journals. Welch is currently working on their third book, The Tarot, which is a comprehensive, tarotic poetry collection of the 78 cards." They joined the board in 2024.

THE VERB: Its Uses and Beauty

with Veronica Golos

In this interactive workshop, we’ll explore the power behind the verbs in your lines. We will examine how strong, surprising, and intentional verb choices can elevate a poem. We'll look at poems that do wonderful things with verbs, and model our own work after the poets who do it well. Writers will receive a list of verbs to spark inspiration beforehand, and they are invited to bring both an old poem for revision, and a new one in which they've used exciting verbs. You will also have time to generate work during the workshop.

Veronica Golos is the author of GIRL, awarded the Naji Naaman Honor Prize, 2019 (Beirut, Lebanon); Rootwork, Winner of the Southwest Book Design Award in Poetry, 2016; Vocabulary of Silence winner of the 2011 New Mexico Book Award, translated into Arabic, Spanish and Persian; and A Bell Buried Deep, winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. She teaches poetry for Tupelo Press, Gemini Ink (San Antonio, Tx.), Diné Technical Institute (Arizona), and SOMOS (Taos, NM). She will be teaching for the Tucson Poetry Festival, and presenting her work at the Wyoming Poetry Society Festival. She lives in Taos, New Mexico, with her husband, David Pérez.