“Write a Musical Score within Poems” Workshop led by Sal Marici, May 16 at MWC

The Midwest Writing Center is hosting a poetry workshop facilitated by Salvatore Marici, author of several collections and chapbooks from Ice Cube Press.

Write a Musical Score within Poems
Music invokes feelings. Musicians have physical tools to create music. Poets’ tools are the skillful arrangements of words and their sounds to convey and reinforce the imagery, meaning that will invoke an emotional response to a poem. Soft repetitive sounds encourage readers to float in a breeze; hard repetitive sounds put readers in a car crash. Rhymes end like nursery rhymes. Rhymes hidden within lines. A pattern of up and down sounds via stress and unstress syllables. We will play with these sound devices. You will write your own score with riffs inside your poem that create imagery, invoke feelings and clarifies meaning.

Announcing the Winners of Iron Pen 2026!

Thanks so much to everyone who participated in Iron Pen 2026. We received many terrific entries, and our excellent judges— Kate Wiegele (nonfiction), Dan Woessner (fiction), and Kristen Sneed (poetry), who are last year’s winners in each category—had very difficult decisions to make in their evaluations. We appreciate everyone’s time and talents in making this year’s contest one of the most competitive we’ve ever had.

Without any further ado, here are the winners of the 2026 Iron Pen Contest, by category…