lullabies & alarms is a hub of poetry craft education
led by poet / editor / multidisciplinary artist Elisabeth Blair
Newsletter
Elisabeth’s free subscription-based publication offer poetry tips, essays, interviews with poets, reading recommendations, writing prompts, freebies, illustrated by her quirky art & music.
If you have extra resources, paid subscriptions are available to support the creator. They are otherwise identical to free subscriptions.
Latest posts:
Online Courses & Products
Offered through the platform Wet Ink, these long-form, online, self-paced courses offer a chance to work one-on-one with Elisabeth. This is also where you can find digital downloads of some of the course’s poetry charts.
Zoom Workshops
Upcoming free and low-fee Zoom-based workshops.
Recent past workshops (in 2022–23) have included:
The Volta, or Turn
The Power of the Persona Poem
The Reader as Conversation Partner
Rhetorical Figures of Speech
Erasure Poetry
Sonic Devices
Relish in the Wreck: The Joy of Revising Poetry
Wednesday September 20, 3:00–4:15 EST
Sunday October 22, 1:00–2:15 EST
In-Person Workshops
Upcoming live, in-person workshops.
Art as Conversation: Interdisciplinary Tools for Fostering Engagement
Saturday September 30, 10:30–3:30
An in-person workshop for creators making work for others to experience—including writers, artists, and musicians.
How can we better involve and intrigue those who encounter our creative works?
Drawing from a multidisciplinary background (in poetry, improvisation, classical and folk music, visual art, conceptual art, and theater), creative professional Elisabeth Blair will share an array of practical techniques and approaches for enhancing the connection between creator and encounterer.
Learn helpful ways of approaching your readers / listeners / viewers as active conversation partners instead of passive audience members.
"Elisabeth has been incredible. She has pushed me to improve my manuscript to a degree I hadn't thought possible. She has not only helped me to clarify and tidy, but also to deepen and intensify. If you choose Elisabeth, you will have to work hard. And you will be wowed by the results."
- Sarah-Jean Krahn, author of A Girl Who Was His House (Gothic Funk Press, 2020)
“Elisabeth is a true gift as a writing coach. Drawing upon her plethoric abilities as an exceptionally talented poet and multidisciplinary artist, Elisabeth is enthusiastic, encouraging, and generously committed to her students. Her pedagogy is individualistic, ripe with suggestions for growth and trilling celebrations of linguistic luxury. Incisive, creative, and insightful, she liberates each poem's heart — or thesis as she calls it — from under the word dross. In her abundant way, Elisabeth may be one of the great poetry teachers of my life.”
- S. Farkas
Consulting & Editing
I love working with writers at all levels of experience. With each client, the shape of it looks a little different. Here are some of the ways I’ve helped out writers:
Manuscript consultant (before, during, and after development of a manuscript)
Poetry Mentor
Revision Mentor
Writing coach
Poetry practice developer
Spot editor
Book editor
I charge a sliding scale fee of $30–$130/hr. You may choose the hourly rate that you can comfortably pay.
I also hold a few free, no-questions-asked spots for those who do not have any extra resources. Please do reach out; if those spots are full I can put you on a wait list.
Who is Elisabeth?
Elisabeth Blair is a poet, editor, and workshop leader with an extensive background in music and the visual arts. Her publications include full-length collection because God loves the wasp (Unsolicited Press 2022), two chapbooks—We He She/It (Dancing Girl Press 2016) and without saying (Ethel Press 2020)—and poems in a variety of journals, including Harpur Palate, Feminist Studies, cream city review, and Juked. Her monthly newsletter, lullabies & alarms, explores the craft of poetry. She has been artist-in-residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Wildacres, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and ACRE. In 2022 she received a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to complete her second book, a poetry novel.
On because God loves the wasp:
Elisabeth Blair writes as a survivor of a sadistic and dehumanizing facility for “troubled teens”—or perhaps the word is “camp.” It certainly reminds us of the other, more famous camps, gulags, and re-education centers we’re aware of. Because Blair is also a brilliant poet, she can take us into the perceptions of the shattered person or, in this case, child. The child understands only the contours of coercion: “the storm wants specific things.” In fact, she no longer identifies as human, and, at times, that seems like a good thing: “You tell them you’re a slice of grass where a shadow falls—/your greens seem burnt/but they’re not.//They don’t believe you.” Blair’s language is barbed, destabilizing, and very much alive. This is an important book.