Join me in this live two-hour class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about about the complicated and animating process of turning a stack of poems into a cohesive poetry collection.

Peace, everybody. I’m Adrian Matejka. I’m a poet and I’ve published six collections of poems as well as a graphic novel. My new and selected poems, Be Easy, is forthcoming from Liveright in March 2026. I was a professor of literature for 17 years, but I left that in 2022 to become Editor-in-Chief of Poetry magazine. I hope you’ll join me for my session Five things I’ve learned about building a book. We’ll spend our time together talking about book making and what I’ve learned about the complicated and animating process of turning a stack of poems into a cohesive poetry collection. 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously wrote that poetry is “the best words in their best order.” He said this in response to a question about the difference between poetry and prose, so the full quote is even more interesting:

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose,—words in their best order; poetry,—the best words in their best order.

I have this quote in mind every time I put together a collection because nearly everything that applies to the crafting of an individual poem applies to the way we organize a collection. Poems are intimate moments of connectivity, of the best words we can conceive in service of not only our imagination, but the imagination of the reader as well. 

All the quiet decisions we make when organizing a collection—from the title of the collection to the thematic or subject-based groupings, to the order in which we place the poems—work together to amplify each individual piece and the resonance between them. 

While poems are often written as if they stand alone, they are never truly solitary. Each poem is a part of the continuum of your work as a poet. Together, we’ll explore how to transform a stack of individual moments into a cohesive, engaging experience for readers. Participants in this session will try a few different organizational strategies including thematic and imagistic ordering, while trying to identify potential opening and closing poems for their project.

My hope is that you’ll leave this session with fresh ideas about how to organize your poems into a chapbook or full-length collection. If you’re just beginning, you’ll gain tools to get started. If you’re already deep in the process, you may discover new ways to think about your current structure or find the clarity you need to make the book you actually want to make. Please join me in this journey.in this journey.

– Adrian Matejka

We’re pleased to offer this class in partnership with Conscious Writers Collective, the online writing platform and global writing community designed around the belief that rigorous writing instruction, a dedicated community of writers, and opportunities to learn from visiting experts should not be exclusive to an MFA. Find out more, and join CWC Poetry or CWC Fiction