Organized by Keleigh Ferguson and Sammy Ginsberg
After our lovely time in May, we’ve decided to host a poetry feedback group for Summer 2026 in-person. This group will be co-hosted by Keleigh Ferguson and Sammy Ginsberg (we met during our Masters in Secondary ELA at CSUN in 2022 and are both high-school ELA teachers and poets)!
Where: Sammy’s living room in Los Feliz
When: Every Tuesday for 5 weeks (July 21, July 28, August 4, August 11, August 18)
Cost: Optional $10 that includes Thai Food from Torung and a glass of wine to be ordered and paid in full when signing up ($50 for 5 weeks), or free but bring your own dinner and drink!
This feedback group is for people who are actively committed to studying, discussing, and writing poetry.
Poetry is an information creation process with six phases: learning, writing, feedback, publishing, performance, and review. This group is focused on feedback on your poem before publishing and/or performing the poem publicly!
To make sure this group is a safe space for sharing and that we can all get feedback on two poems, we are keeping it small (up to 8 people) as well as asking you to attend for the whole duration with reasonable exceptions so that you are both sharing and contributing to the group.
Your experience-level does not matter as long as you:
- you are confident enough in your identity as a poet that receiving negative/critical feedback will not stop you from continuing to practice poetry
- acknowledge that poetry is an art form with specific techniques with a history going back centuries across many cultures and civilizations
- are honored and excited to be part of the poetry community, to continue practicing this ancient tradition
- accept you don’t know everything and never will
- that being “the best” or “award-winning” is created by capitalism and hierarchy to sell books, control access to resources, and limit power and that all poems have value, are “good enough”
- actively create a safe environment for people to share their authentic voice via the poetry form, make their own choices and mistakes, and learn from feedback!
To join, you will need at least one poem you would like feedback on; to engage in our feedback protocol; share about your favorite poets and poetry collections; and commit to a poetry goal! We promise that you can have at least 2 feedback sessions.
Sign-ups will close on July 14th! First come, first serve with priority going to those who can commit to all five meetings. We will confirm your spot by July 16th.
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