Creative Writing Programs :: NewPages Guide
Columbia College Chicago
MFA in Poetry
English Department
600 S. Michigan Ave.
Chicago, IL 60605
Program director: Tony Trigilio
Program contact: Becca Klaver, Assistant Programs Director
Phone: (312) 369-8819
Email: rklaver[at]colum[dot]edu
Degrees offered: MFA
Genres: Poetry
Type of program: Residency
Length of program: 2 years
Enrollment: 10-12 students per year
Total credits required: 40
Application deadlines: January 4, 2010
Scholarships available: Yes
Core faculty: Lisa Fishman, Arielle Greenberg, Tony Trigilio, David Trinidad; Jenny Boully (Poetry & CNF)
Assistantships: No; first-year writing teaching experience available, but no formal assistantships.
Publishing/editing courses: Yes
Literary magazine: Yes; The English Department is home to four literary journals; MFA students help edit Columbia Poetry Review, Court Green, and Hotel Amerika.
Reading series: Yes
Recent visiting writers: Matthea Harvey, Terrance Hayes, Harryette Mullen, Alice Notley, D.A. Powell, Jean Valentine.
Program description: Columbia College Chicago’s MFA Program in Creative Writing–Poetry, one of the only single-genre programs in the country, prepares you to write, publish, and edit poetry at a high professional level. Through a flexible two-year program at an art school in downtown Chicago, you’ll gain a sophisticated understanding of poetry as a contemporary and historical practice as you bolster your imaginative and critical abilities.
Literature and Craft Seminars (including Collage & Collaboration; Meditation and Poetics; Poetry & Film; Translating Poetry; and Duende, Negative Capability, and the Art of Freestyle), along with Poetry Workshops and electives in pedagogy and literary magazine editing, will prepare you as a writer, teacher, and editor. You’ll have a chance to meet visiting writers and publishers through frequent coffee chats, and through our national reading series.
In your final semester, you’ll polish your book-length thesis manuscript as you work one-on-one with one of the four nationally-renowned, award-winning poets that make up our core faculty. When you complete your MFA, you’ll be poised to participate in the worlds of academia, publishing, and the arts: our students not only actively publish their own work, but also start readings series and small presses.
Students find work through the Poetry Foundation, Chicago Poetry Center, and other local arts and service organizations. On-campus work opportunities include tutoring, editing, and teaching as a Graduate Student Instructor. Columbia’s tuition and fees are far lower than those of most other private institutions, making our program a wise investment in your craft.
“No one school of poetry is taught at Columbia—or more importantly, no one style favored over another. This makes for a writing environment where innovative, wildly varied, original work is being made.”
—Hanna Andrews, MFA ’07