Three English courses and an intensive writing seminar at Penn in a single year gave Angela a sharp sense of how language works at the sentence level — a skill that translates directly into crafting poems where every word has to justify its presence. She teaches students to move from raw emotion to deliberate choices about diction and imagery, turning loose drafts into tighter, more intentional pieces. Rated 5.0 by students.

Sarah's dual background in English and music gives her an unusual ear for the sonic dimension of poetry — line breaks, meter, assonance, the way a vowel sound can carry emotional weight. She teaches students to draft with attention to both image and rhythm, then revise with the kind of precision that turns a rough piece into something that resonates. Her PhD work at Harvard keeps her immersed in how language and performance intersect.

Hasan earned his B.A. in Literary Arts at Brown, where poetry wasn't just something he studied — it was central to his creative practice. He digs into line breaks, sound, imagery, and form with students, treating each draft as raw material to sculpt rather than a finished product to correct.

Most writing teaches students to explain — poetry teaches them to compress, to make a single image do the work of a paragraph. David's broad literary background across American literature, comparative literature, and creative writing gives him a strong sense of how diction and economy function on the page, and he brings that sensibility to helping poets move from raw feeling to deliberate craft choices about word selection, rhythm, and voice.

Poetry demands precision that no other form of writing does — every line break, every syllable carries weight. Dakota approaches poetry writing through both craft and interpretation, drawing on her deep background in literature to show students how established poets manipulate sound, imagery, and form. Whether a student is experimenting with free verse or wrestling with a villanelle, she digs into the specific choices that make a poem land.

I am a graduate of the Master's program at the School of Education at St. John's University, and a graduate of the undergraduate English program at Washington University in St. Louis. I am currently eligible to teach 7th to 12th grade English in a New York City school under the Initial Certificate, and have a combined three years of experience in the Department of Education. I have a significant background in tutoring, including test prep, English, Mathematics, and Social Studies. My extensive background in education, coupled with my intense desire to bring about positive change in the lives of New York City school children and my belief in the importance of using emerging educational technologies to engage with and enrich the education of students, has made me both a successful teacher, and a popular tutor.

Writing poetry isn't just about feelings on a page — it's about learning to wield line breaks, meter, imagery, and sound to create something precise. Meg holds a Master's in Reading/Writing/Literacy and brings a practitioner's eye to craft, walking students through everything from formal sonnets to free verse. Her background in theater also sharpens her ear for rhythm and spoken-word performance.

Poetry demands precision that no other form of writing does — every line break, every stressed syllable, every image earns its place or doesn't. Sarah's performance background means she teaches poetry as something meant to be heard, walking students through sound devices like enjambment, caesura, and assonance until the music of a poem becomes a deliberate choice rather than an accident.

Getting a poem from raw feeling to finished piece means learning when to cut, when to compress, and when a single verb can replace three lines of explanation. David's MA in English Adolescent Education and years teaching creative writing and fiction give him a practical framework for walking students through that distillation process — drafting for energy first, then revising for diction, voice, and the specific craft moves that make a poem land.

Poetry demands precision with language that no other form of writing quite matches — choosing between "shattered" and "broke" can change an entire poem's meaning. Meagan digs into line breaks, imagery, meter, and sound devices with students, treating each draft as raw material worth reshaping. Her literature background and love of close reading make her especially effective at teaching students to hear what their own poems are doing.

Valerie's training is in applied math, not literature — but that analytical mindset turns out to be surprisingly useful when a student needs to understand why a particular stanza structure works or how syllable stress creates rhythm. She brings a builder's logic to poetry, treating revision as problem-solving: isolating what each line is doing, cutting what isn't earning its place, and testing whether an image holds up under pressure.

Writing a poem isn't just about feeling — it's about choosing whether a line break lands on a stressed or unstressed syllable, whether an image earns its abstraction. Malina studied Greek and Latin verse forms intensively at Yale, giving her a deep toolkit of meter, sound patterning, and formal structure that she brings to workshops on both free verse and received forms.