Poetry – MA or MFA in Creative Writing

Poetry creates a visceral experience through the compressed power of sound, image, and form. The Poetry concentration invites students to explore the full range of poetic craft through close reading, experimentation, and sustained creative practice.

Students engage deeply with poetry across styles, historical periods, and cultural contexts while refining their own aesthetic voice. The concentration is led by accomplished faculty poets who provide individualized mentorship and rigorous workshop experiences, helping students move beyond technical clarity toward work that evokes lived emotional experience.

Faculty mentors specialize in areas such as Eco-Poetics, formal innovation, lyric tradition, and hybrid forms. Through this close collaboration, students in the poetry concentration within the MA or MFA in Creative Writing gain the critical insight, creative discipline, and professional grounding needed to produce resonant, impactful work.

Graduate study in poetry is both rigorous and transformative. Your journey in the Poetry concentration is designed to be as deep and transformative as the work you create. Under the direction of acclaimed poet Elizabeth Bradfield, you will move beyond technical clarity to help your unique voice evoke the actual feelings you explore.

Apprenticeship with Masters

Students in the Poetry concentration benefit from close apprenticeship with an award-winning faculty of practicing poets, including CMarie Fuhrman, Maya Jewell Zeller, Byron Aspaas, Erica Reid, Tyson Hausdoerffer, and Cameron McGill.

In addition to core faculty mentorship, students engage with distinguished visiting writers and guest speakers such as Linda Hogan, Ellen Bass, Ross Gay, and J. Drew Lanham. These encounters expose students to a wide range of poetic approaches and professional pathways, ensuring their work is informed by voices shaping contemporary literature.

Your Creative Path

• The Summer Residencies: Your experience centers on intensive summer residencies in Gunnison. MFA students attend three residencies focused on program preparation, chapbook creation, and the professional presentation of their work. MA students attend the first two residencies.
• Flexible Online Learning: Throughout the academic year, you will complete two six-credit courses each semester via video conferencing. This low-residency format allows you to engage deeply with poetics while maintaining your professional life.
• The Culminating Work: To complete the MFA, you will develop a book-length poetry manuscript under the dedicated supervision of a faculty mentor. MA students complete their degree through foundational coursework and residency requirements.
• A Visceral Experience: We explore the compressed potential of sound, image, and form, reading widely across styles, time periods, and identities to help you find the precise shape for your vision.

The Ecopoetry Track at the Graduate Program in Creative Writing invites poets to explore the intersections of language, place, and the more-than-human world. Rooted in the landscapes and communities of the American West — and open to students writing from anywhere — this track draws on the combined strengths of the Poetry and Nature Writing concentrations to support writers engaging ecological imagination, environmental change, and questions of justice and belonging.

Students in the Ecopoetry Track move through the program with the Poetry cohort while completing at least two courses in Nature Writing. Through close reading, field-based awareness, and rigorous craft study, students explore contemporary ecopoetics alongside broader poetic traditions. The thesis or capstone centers on a sustained collection of ecopoetry, mentored by a practicing ecopoet.

This track is designed for poets who want to deepen their relationship to place — urban or wild, local or global — and to create work that responds thoughtfully to a rapidly changing world.

Students interested in the Ecopoetry Track should apply to the Poetry concentration and indicate their interest in ecopoetics in their cover letter.

Student Learning Objectives

Students in the Ecopoetry Track will:

• Read widely in contemporary poetry, ecopoetics, and nature writing
• Strengthen their understanding of poetic craft and terminology
• Engage diverse voices and movements within environmental and literary traditions
• Develop the ability to read critically and analytically “like a writer”
• Situate their own work within poetic and ecowriting lineages
• Draft, revise, and complete a cohesive collection of ecopoetry