Finding and Honing Your Voice in Poetry: A Workshop on Poetry and Sproken-Word Performance with Bao Phi

Poetry is an artful communication, and much of the effort is in finding your unique voice. This applies to the writing of the poetry, as well as the delivery of it. Join Bao Phi, a former poetry slam champ, a published poet, and a spoken word poet for over two decades, in this generative workshop. We’ll study poems, write poems, and read poems to one another. Please bring paper, a writing utensil, or a laptop – whatever you are comfortable writing on.

Bao Phi has been a spoken word poet for over two decades. He has two collections of poems, both published by Coffeehouse Press, Song I Sing and Thousand Star Hotel, the latter of which was nominated for the Minnesota Book Award and was chosen as 2017’s best poetry book of the year by San Francisco State’s Poetry Center.

His first children’s book, A Different Pond, received six starred reviews and won multiple awards including a Caldecott Honor, an Ezra Jack Keats Honor, Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association award for best picture book, the Minnesota Book Award for picture books, and the Charlotte Zolotow Award for excellence in children’s book writing. It made several best books of the year lists, including Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and Shelf Awareness. His second children’s book, My Footprints, was release by Capstone in 2019 and was named a Best Fiction Book for Young Readers by the Chicago Public Library. He is the Director of Events and Awards at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, where he lives with his ten-year-old daughter.