ModPo 2025 (click to enroll here now)
ENROLL HERE! **
ModPo is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, with an emphasis on experimental verse, from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman to the present. Participants (who need no prior experience with poetry) will learn how to read poems that are supposedly “difficult.” We encounter and discuss the poems one at a time. It’s much easier than it seems! Join us and try it! Click HERE to enroll. It’s free, non-credit, and open to all.
Currently we are in our “SloPo” season (or off-season). The ModPo site is open as always. The poems and videos are all available to anyone. The discussion forums are open. There are some SloPo mini-courses happening.
Our 10-week “symposium mode”—during which we all move through the ten sections or “chapters” of the course together—occurs each autumn.
ModPo 2025 will begin on Saturday, August 30, 2025.
If you have questions, you can email the ModPo team at modpo@writing.upenn.edu. During the 10 weeks of the course, you will be guided through poems, video discussions of each poem, and community discussions of each poem. And (unique among open online courses) we offer weekly, interactive live webcasts. Our famed TAs also offer office hours throughout the week. We help arrange meet-ups and in-site study groups. If you are curious about the ModPo team, watch this INTRODUCTORY VIDEO. You will get an overview of the course and will meet the brilliant TAs, who will be encountering the poems with you all the way to the end.
If you use Facebook, join the always-thriving ModPo group HERE. If you have any questions about ModPo, you can post a question to the Facebook group and you’ll receive an almost instant reply. We tweet all year long at @ModPoPenn and you can also find ModPo colleagues using the hashtag #ModPoLive.
ModPo is hosted by—and is housed at—the Kelly Writers House at 3805 Locust Walk on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia USA. All ModPo’ers are welcome to visit the Writers House when they are in our area. Our discussions are filmed there. Our live webcasts take place in the famed “Arts Cafe” of the House. To find out what’s going on at the Writers House any time, just dial 215-746-POEM.
