Writing through Art: Poetry Workshop at the Smith College Museum of Art
For new and experienced poets, ages 18 and up.
Free – registration required.
Register Here
This program will also run on August 22, 10:30 a.m.– 12:00 p.m. Please select one date when registering.
Join poet and educator Jan Freeman for one of these free Writing Through Art: Poetry Workshop at the Smith College Museum of Art. Together, we will experience the new exhibition Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and, weather permitting, we will visit the Capen Gardens on the Smith College campus as well. Poets will write drafts using paintings by Alma Thomas as portals to open memories, emotion, and experiment with fresh ways of using language.
Experience the many ways that visual art opens inspiration, perception, memory, and language. New and experienced poets, ages 18 and up, may attend. Wear comfortable walking shoes, and please bring a notebook and sharpened pencils (no pens are permitted in the museum galleries). Maximum enrollment: 14
This workshop will take place at the Smith College Museum of Art, 20 Elm Street, Northampton, MA. Please register at this link.
Space is limited, and registrations are processed in the order received. Please note that your registration does not automatically confirm your enrollment. You will receive a confirmation within 2–3 business days.
Questions? Please email museduc@smith.edu
This workshop is presented in conjunction with the SCMA exhibition Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, on view July 24, 2026 – January 10, 2027. This workshop is funded by the Art Bridges Foundation Access for All grant.
About
Jan Freeman is the author of a new manuscript of poetry, The Odyssey of Yes and No, and three books of poems: Hyena (Cleveland State University Poetry Center), Simon Says, nominated for an NBCC (Paris Press/Wesleyan University Press), and Blue Structure championed by Ilya Kaminsky (Calypso Editions). Her awards include a 2026 Massachusetts Cultural Council grant; a 2025 Pushcart Prize Special Mention, and fellowships from MacDowell, the VCCA, the Wurlitzer Foundation, the Spiral Shell/Moulin a Nef, and the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center. Her poems have appeared and/or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poem a Day/The Academy of American Poets, Bennington Review, Prairie Schooner, North American Review, the Massachusetts Review, Salamander, the Brooklyn Rail, Gargoyle, Hole in the Head Review, and many other journals and anthologies.
For 23 years, Jan directed Paris Press, based in Ashfield, which she founded in 1996 to reissue Muriel Rukeyser's The Life of Poetry and publish groundbreaking but overlooked literature by women. She was a contributing editor for APR, soliciting poetry by essential contemporary women poets who the journal had long neglected (Nina Cassian, Adrienne Rich, Toi Derricotte, Ruth Stone, etc.). She directs the MASS MoCA Writing Through Art Poetry Retreats and lives in Ashfield. www.janfreeman.net