Registration opens:
September 20th, 2025

Finding Your True Poem: A Revision Workshop *

True Lit 2025

Suzanne Underwood Rhodes, poet laureate of Arkansas, will present this poetry workshop as part of True Lit 2025.

In this workshop, Suzanne will present proven strategies to help you find your truest poem among the bulk of words in your first draft, as Michaelangelo discovered his David in the heart of the marble. Bring a poem to the workshop that you care about but want to improve. Everyone will have a copy of your poem.

Here are but a few revision questions to consider:
• Why does this poem matter to me, and why should it matter to a reader?
• Have I thought deeply about the truth of my poem, the subjective truth “without the pressure and framework of logic or science” as one source describes it?
• Am I doing too much explaining instead of relying on imagery and other literary tools to carry meaning?
• What words, lines, stanzas can I change or eliminate to uncover the poem’s truth?
• Is my language fresh, surprising, specific, and charged, or am I using stale, imitative, overly general speech?

After going over some key revision strategies, you’ll have an opportunity to work on your poem by applying any of them Then I will ask for volunteers to read their revised draft aloud.

Suzanne Underwood Rhodes is the poet laureate of Arkansas, and in that role, she travels throughout the state to give workshops, readings, and lectures to audiences ranging from kindergarten to middle and high schools, to colleges and universities, and seniors in retirement. She recently brought poetry to formerly incarcerated women at Magdalene Serenity House and residents in memory care at Butterfield Trail Village in a program she called “Poetry on Purpose.”

She is the author of several poetry collections, including her most recent chapbooks The Perfume of Pain and Flyways, the latter co-authored with Fayetteville poet Gerry Sloan, and Flying Yellow: New and Selected Poems, named a semi-finalist in the 2022 North American Book Award of the Poetry Society of Virginia. Other books are What a Light Thing, This Stone; two other chapbooks, Hungry Foxes and Weather of the House, two books of lyrical prose, A Welcome Shore and Sketches of Home, and a textbook, The Roar on the Other Side: A Guide for Student Poets. Her poems have appeared in many journals, books, and anthologies, with recent work in Bellevue Literary Review, Mid/South Anthology, Slant, Green Mountains Review, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Medicine and Meaning, and Christian Century.

Awards include being named the Individual Artist of the Year by the Arkansas Governor’s 2025 award sponsored by the Arkansas Arts Council, first place in the prestigious Sybil Nash Abrams poetry prize of the Poets Roundtable of Arkansas, first place in the Dr. Lily Peter Memorial Award, first place in the Richard Lewis Haiku contest, first place in the Virginia Highlands Creative Writing Contest, two Pushcart Prize nominations, and others.

Suzanne recently moved from Fayetteville to Siloam Springs, where she is an adjunct instructor at John Brown University. She also teaches virtual poetry workshops through the Muse Writers Center in Norfolk, Virginia.

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