The master of fine arts degree in creative writing with an emphasis in poetry is designed to develop your growth as a writer and reader of poetry, enhance your awareness of the contemporary poetic field, and highlight opportunities in publishing, teaching, and community work. We are an intimate community of writers (the poetry program has 30–35 total students on average) and our alumni maintain strong connections with one another and with Bay Area poetry communities. Graduates of our program publish their work in magazines, anthologies, and full-length collections; regularly perform at local and national venues; and are themselves successful publishers and editors.

While at Mills, you’ll have the opportunity to study with renowned poets and core faculty members Stephen Ratcliffe and Juliana Spahr, as well as with a wide range of visiting writers working in diverse aesthetic traditions. Recent visiting poets include Will Alexander, Justin Chin, Susan Gevirtz, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Joanne Kyger, Walter Lew, Laura Moriarty, Leslie Scalapino, and Truong Tran. You’ll also have the opportunity to work with our renowned literature faculty in courses that focus on the history and criticism of literature and literary theory.

Every semester several renowned poets visit campus as part of our Contemporary Writers Series. Visitors include those who focus on performance, such as Tracie Morris and Edwin Torres, and writers who focus on translation, such as Clayton Eshleman, reading from his translations of Cesar Vallejo. Other readers emphasize work that moves between genres, such as Bhanu Kapil and Claudia Rankine, while Bruce Andrews and Joan Retallack are representative of writers and thinkers integral to U.S. poetry for many years. Many of these readings include opportunities for our MFA students to attend a workshop or meet directly with the poets as part of their visit.

At Mills you’ll engage with your own writing and that of your peers. You’ll listen as poetry presented in workshop moves to the microphone at our regular Works in Progress reading series, or watch as it is transformed into a broadside created and produced in the Mills book art studio, our historic Eucalyptus Press. You may have an idea for a new performance series, or begin to collaborate with a musician, dancer, or visual artist from one of the other innovative MFA programs on campus. You may work on the editorial staff of our magazine, 580 Split. You may be a graduate assistant at The Place for Writers, where you’ll help make the reading series happen, or build important community relationships placing creative writers in volunteer teaching positions in local schools.

In short, you can shape your MFA in poetry in a variety of ways to create a one-of-a-kind educational experience.