Explore the influence of dreams, dream recollection and dream interpretation in poetry. We will discuss the ways in which poetry simulates the variability of dream states, source dream memories for the content of our poems, and develop dream poems to then draft in handmade chapbooks and workshop as a group. Much of the workshop will focus on the connections between memory, middling states of consciousness, sleep phases, and how they can be structurally and imaginatively woven into the writing process.  

Connie Mae Oliver is a poet and artist living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her first book of poems, Cosmos A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan Ann Druyan Steven Soter And Me (Operating System, 2017) is about nuclear disarmament. Her second book, Science Fiction Fiction (Spuyten Duyvil, 2020) is an homage to Miami-Dade County and color photography in the early aughts. Her first novel, Close Encounters, is forthcoming in 2026 from Texas Review Press. This poetry workshop is an extension of her most recent collection of poems, dormilona (Burrow Press, 2025), which focuses on dreams and matrilineal memory.