The Post-Mormon Poets Society

We read and respond to poems in excruciating detail. It's fun, I promise!

This is an online workshop / critique group for poets with a post-Mormon or otherwise unorthodox Mormon background, particularly for work on related themes, but open to anything.

I've had the privilege of running the Seattle Poetry Meetup since 2020 and have no plans to stop. It's been incredibly enriching to regularly talk poetry with others passionate about it, and to hear their feedback on my work.

However, the Mormon thing is a cultural barrier that makes poetry dealing with it harder for people without that background to take in. I'd like to have a place to talk poetry with people who know something about the world I'm describing in my Mormonism-related poems.

My poetry credentials: As mentioned, I have been hosting the Seattle Poetry Meetup for the past two years. I'm not academically trained in poetry, though I did have some literature classes in English and Spanish, but I do have a degree in linguistics, and am very good at closely parsing text, plus I've studied up a little. I've been drawn to poetry since my early twenties, mostly through love for the written word itself, and find myself writing a great deal of poetry as a form of self-therapy.

My Mormon credentials: born and raised in eastern Washington State to Mormon convert parents from Los Angeles. Did the BYU thing and stuck around Provo until 2018. Spent 20 years trying to "get a testimony", which never happened. Things came apart for me around age 35, for all the reasons. I also run a monthly meetup for the Seattle Ex-Mormons.

(Cover image: Wild grass and cultivated grass by Richard Humphrey)