Jay Ritchie is a poet, editor, teacher, and Ph.D. student studying poetry and performance at McGill University. He has an MFA in Poetry from UMass Amherst and is the Managing Editor of Vallum magazine. He has taught creative writing at the undergraduate level as well as for youth through the Juniper Institute for Young Writers. He is the author of Cheer Up, Jay Ritchie (Coach House Books, 2017), of which Rebecca Wolff, the founder of Fence Books, said, “With their clever – but never glib – concision of image, and emotional directedness, these poems actually make me feel something, and that is something I really enjoy.” This is what his approach to teaching poetry aims to achieve, precisely: real feeling. Workshop participants are invited to use structures as inspiration for their own poems, writing “covers” of unforgettable poems. By rehearsing them in their own unique styles, participants learn how to make poetry work for their own voices so that they can hit all the right notes the next time they set out to sing.
https://jaywritchie.tumblr.com/