Welcome to SPACE, our adult continuing education program which offers interactive monthly courses for personal enrichment! Learn more here.
Sarah Anne Stinnett
Prospective SPACE Preceptor
Writer & voice-focused educator
Sarah Anne Stinnett is a writer, performer, and educator whose work bridges voice, literature, and presence. She teaches courses in composition, speech, and interdisciplinary crafts at Southern New Hampshire University, Berklee Online, and Harvard Extension School, and is passionate about helping others inhabit their words with greater clarity and connection. Her teaching combines creativity and rigor in a warm, accessible environment where students can experiment and grow.
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All Modules
Sonics of the Poetic Line
Mixed Lecture/Discussion • Medium intensity
What makes a poem sing, or whisper, or chant, or curse—that is, make memorable speech? How do you craft that echo when one sound calls another to the surface—stress to stress, line to line? Sometimes the smallest beat, breath, or break can turn a poem’s ordinary sense into what Seamus Heaney called “the music of what happens.”
Through the pulse of stress, or the line that ends at rest or breaks in tension, poetry, as James Longenbach writes in The Art of the Poetic Line, “is the sound of language organized in lines.” The poetic line and its sonics are inextricably linked—to each other and to the other elements of the poem with which they are bound up.
In this workshop, we’ll tune our ears to poetry’s music through a weekly craft focus, generative prompts, and a supportive workshop. We’ll read short excerpts from Robert Pinsky (The Sound of Poetry), James Longenbach (The Art of the Poetic Line), and Denise Levertov (“On the Function of the Line”). Together we’ll explore sonic patterns that stir and surprise; we’ll write poems that make sense through the senses.
This course is for poets at all stages who want to deepen their craft in community. You’ll leave with new drafts, sharper ears, and a keener attention to the key quality that singles poetry out from prose: its complex of lines.
Through the pulse of stress, or the line that ends at rest or breaks in tension, poetry, as James Longenbach writes in The Art of the Poetic Line, “is the sound of language organized in lines.” The poetic line and its sonics are inextricably linked—to each other and to the other elements of the poem with which they are bound up.
In this workshop, we’ll tune our ears to poetry’s music through a weekly craft focus, generative prompts, and a supportive workshop. We’ll read short excerpts from Robert Pinsky (The Sound of Poetry), James Longenbach (The Art of the Poetic Line), and Denise Levertov (“On the Function of the Line”). Together we’ll explore sonic patterns that stir and surprise; we’ll write poems that make sense through the senses.
This course is for poets at all stages who want to deepen their craft in community. You’ll leave with new drafts, sharper ears, and a keener attention to the key quality that singles poetry out from prose: its complex of lines.