What was PoemWorks: The Workshop for Publishing Poets?

Barbara first began to teach poetry in 1984 with a casual living-room group at her home in Brookline, MA. As she attracted attention with her own publications and became a well-known poetry teacher at schools and colleges around Boston, the group grew. In 1996 she committed to running the workshop full time with the name PoemWorks: The Workshop for Publishing Poets, which remained her primary occupation until she became unable to teach in 2018. She taught hundreds of students over the years, and PoemWorks received public praise on different occasions, with the Boston Globe calling it “One of the best workshops in Boston.” 

A tribute to Barbara Helfgott Heytt by members of PoemWorks

What Made PoemWorks Special?

Barbara’s expertise as a poet and her natural ability to intuit the feelings and desires behind her students’ work was supported by a unique workshop methodology that she developed. As the name “Workshop for Publishing Poets” implies, the one strict requirement Barbara had for her students was that they write with the intention to eventually publish their work, regardless of where they were with their poetic careers. She would begin each workshop with “PoBiz” where students would relay to the group what journals they had submitted to and sometimes, with celebration, where they had been accepted for publication. Far from competitive, this activity often focused on analyzing rejection letters, cover letters, and any other content so that students might have a deeper understanding of the confusing world of professional poetry. She encouraged workshop attendees to record of their acceptances in a book for all to read, complete with dates and notes. She kept her classes small and guaranteed each person at least 15 mins of dedicated feedback. At the end of each workshop, she held a creative generation session in the form of prompted, timed bursts of free-writing, and encouraged all her students to free-write as much as possible on their own.

In this context, Barbara was able to perform the miracle of delivering much-needed criticism while at the same time leaving students encouraged and ready to write more. Filled with emotion, former students often have difficulty expressing exactly how they felt while attending PoemWorks, but those looking for results can be pointed to the many, many excellent books and poems out in the world that have been built line by line in “the workshop.”