POET IN MOTION
Molly Peacock celebrates 40 years of teaching poetry workshops at 92NY

This year, award-winning poet, biographer, and memoirist Molly Peacock celebrates her 40th year of teaching poetry workshops at 92NY. Our longest-serving writing instructor, Peacock is also a co-creator of the popular Poetry in Motion program, which makes poems accessible to millions of New Yorkers every years in our subway system  — her love of poetry, and curiosity about the creative process, has inspired our students and New York commuters of every stripe for decades.

Ahead of her upcoming class, Reading The Romantic Sonnets Like a Writer, Peacock sat down with us this week to talk about what keeps her coming back to teach at 92NY year after year: why her workshops are so popular, how her students inspire her own work, bringing poets together from all walks of life, the importance of making poetry available outside of academia, and much more.

You’ve been leading poetry workshops at 92NY for 40 years. What were your earliest experiences of teaching here? How does it compare to the workshops you teach today?

I have always had two different kinds of students at 92NY: students who have never written poetry before but find it intriguing — I myself have been this kind of student in cartooning classes I’ve taken at 92NY — and students who have MFA degrees, but want to continue their education. Forty years ago, there weren’t very many places to study poetry outside of a university, so 92NY was a beacon.  For four decades, everyone who has signed up for a class with me here has been lively, smart, and engaged. My teaching philosophy has always been to meet every student where they are, and then to bring them a couple of steps beyond that point. I have people in my classes who have published two, three, four books of poetry — and at the same time, I had a student in my last class who is a massage therapist and recently became interested in poetry. Nowadays, because classes are on Zoom, I have students from all over the English-speaking world — it’s fabulous, and very different from the 1985 New York-based student population. Any poet at any level can benefit from new techniques, perspectives, and guidance. Most education systems separate the poets who are experienced from the ones who are just getting started — I think that’s a mistake. At 92NY, those groups can come together and learn from one another.

You are the longest-serving writing instructor who teaches here, by a long shot. What keeps you coming back?

Because it’s fun! By the time you’re my age, just short of 80, a lot of people are tired of teaching, but it consistently interests me — probably because I only teach one or two workshops a year. And for the last 15 years, my spring class has been linked to another great cultural institution in New York. We’ve collaborated with the Frick, the Morgan Library, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art — this comes from my own interests. This year we’re working with the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library, because I’ve become interested in archives and textual studies. That’s how the adventure begins.

You are a highly accomplished poet — plus a biographer and a memoirist. How does teaching affect your own creative life?

I like being among people who also have creative lives, no matter where they are — I love the freshness of a poet who is just getting started. These are adults with their own lives — lawyers, psychiatrists, massage therapists, like my recent student — and their perspectives interest me.  They are not afraid to ask questions, and I in turn am not afraid to answer. One of the joys of teaching here is that I get to model a way to live a creative life. I have had a long life in writing, and people are curious about the twists and turns I’ve taken and how I approach poetry. And I am proud that my 92NY classes have developed a following.

During COVID, I started taking online classes myself, like the cartooning classes at 92NY I mentioned earlier. I loved seeing these art instructors work — art instructors are so free and loose in the way that they show students their creative processes. It inspired me. So now I show my poetry students my in-progress drafts. It brings all of us into the presence of the creative act, on equal footing. This has made me much more aware of my own writing, which has been revelatory. Ultimately, I am a student of the creative process, and I have been my whole life.

You were one of the co-creators of Poetry in Motion, the program that brings poetry to riders on the New York subway system — it is probably the primary way that the majority of New Yorkers encounter poetry. Why is it important to put poetry in a public space, outside of academia?

Not everyone has been educated to read poetry, and yet poetry is — or should be — utterly available to everyone. I am the first person in my family to go to college. My father was one of those guys on the subway with a lunch pail. To be able to show a poem to a guy like my dad — a real poem — meant a great deal to me. And it makes New York a greater city. There are only a few cities in the world that have poetry on public transportation. I felt that New York needed to be among them. At the time that I co-created Poetry in Motion with poet Elise Paschen, Director Emerita of the Poetry Society of America, MTA chief Alan Kiepper was a poetry fan — I think he was a little jealous that there was poetry on the London Tube, and he wanted New York to have it too. Millions and millions of people read these poems. It’s the best project I’ve ever been a part of. It always makes me smile.

What do you hope your students take with them from your workshops?

My aim is always to leave my students in a state of complete overstimulation! [Laughs] They should have so many ideas that they can write poetry for a whole year, until they come back for another class.

Molly Peacock’s upcoming workshops are Reading the Romantic Sonnets like a Writer (beginning Tue, Mar 10) and Writing Poetry with Molly Peacock: Inspiration from the New York Public Library (beginning Sun, Mar 1). Register today.