Poetry and Architecture: A Workshop with Toby Altman

Saturday, November 9, 2024

This workshop brings together two arts that rarely find themselves in conversation: poetry and architecture. What can poetry teach us about architecture—how it feels, tastes, and shapes our bodies and lives? And what can architecture teach us about poetry—how it engages with and reshapes the built environment in which we live? Using Photographing Frank Lloyd Wright and the Driehaus Museum itself as inspiration, this workshop will challenge the way you see architecture, inviting you to see the buildings you love with fresh eyes. No prior experience with poetry necessary.

About the Instructor:

Toby Altman is the author of Jewel Box (Essay Press, 2025), Discipline Park (Wendy’s Subway, 2023), and Arcadia, Indiana (Plays Inverse, 2017). He has held fellowships from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Study in the Fine Arts, MacDowell, and the National Endowment for the Arts, where he was a 2021 Poetry Fellow. He currently teaches at Michigan State University, where he is Assistant Professor in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities (RCAH) and Director of the RCAH Center for Poetry.

Photo credit: Toby Altman, from “The Commuters,”2020. Textual collage superimposed on a map of downtown Chicago, 11 x 8 1/2 in. Courtesy Toby Altman