The free, open, non-credit course on modern & contemporary U.S. poetry hosted by the Kelly Writers House—known as “ModPo”—will begin its sixth year on Saturday, September 9. ModPo is designed as a 10-week course, but it also serves (all year, always open) resource site and also as a community for...
Class Central’s assessment of reviews and responses (contributed to their own site and that of others) is that ModPo is in the top 3 among free open online courses “of all time.” LINKS: [] the Class Central top 50 ranking [] how to enroll in ModPo [] ModPo week 8...
I’m writing you briefly this morning from the Kelly Writers House in Philadelphia, PA, USA, to say hello, and welcome you (or welcome you back) to ModPo, our course on—and community gathered around—modern and contemporary U.S. poetry. I will be writing again in the coming days. Please forgive the flurry...
Here is a highlight reel — brief clips — from week 9 of ModPo, our free, open, online 10-week course on modern and contemporary U.S. poetry.
As you might know, we at the Kelly Writers House at Penn, six years ago, created an open, free, online course on modern and contemporary U.S. poetry. The next 10-week session of ModPo begins on September 9, 2017. We hope you’ll join us (simply click HERE). We have greatly enjoyed working...
When the ModPo team visited the San Francisco area last fall, Kelly Liu, a local high-school senior, joined us for the webcast in Mountain View and the meet-up/collaborative close reading in San Francisco. Kelly was an avid, active participant/learner/“student” in ModPo. Well, Kelly became very interested in the arts & humanities at Penn,...
Recently we put out a call for ModPo people worldwide who might like to help us voluntarily to translate video subtitles in various languages. The first video in the course—on Emily Dickinson—is now available in French, Chinese, and Arabic. We will be adding Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Russian and several other...
Soon after sending another update to all the people enrolled in ModPo, I received this note from Carlene (one of the 20,000 or so ModPo’ers who received my message): You probably already know, but a university that is alway open is the sentinel of a modern way of considering learning....
A few months ago I announced that the ModPo team would be taking our annual “on the road” webcast to London, England, this year. Today we are excited to share more details of this visit. We are very grateful to our London-based partners for providing us spaces to host our...
We have made a new video for ModPo—on Lorine Niedecker’s “I married.” During this discussion we listen to two voicemail left for us by ModPo people, asking questions about this poem. Here is a link to the video.
Al Filreis is Kelly Professor, Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, Director of the Center
for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Co-Director of PennSound, and Publisher of Jacket2—all at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are Secretaries of the Moon,
Wallace Stevens & the Actual World, Modernism from Left to Right, and Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-60. His new book is 1960: When Art & Literature Confronted the Memory of World War II & Remade the Modern (Columbia University Press, 2021). He is currently writing a book about online pedagogy. He has taught a massive open online course, "ModPo," to 265,000 participants in 192 countries since 2012.
Founder/Faculty Director, Kelly Writers House—intro video ][ events calendar
Convener/teacher, “ModPo.” an open online course on modern & contemporary U.S. poetry—overview of the course ][ intro video
Publisher of Jacket2 magazine—my Jacket2 commentary series ][ "First Readings"
Producer/host, PoemTalk podcast series—co-sponsored by Kelly Writers House & the Poetry Foundation
Director of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing—Creative Writing ][ RealArts internships ]
Co-founder & co-director of PennSound—50,000 files ][ 15 million downloads annually
Teacher & host, "Kelly Writers House Fellows"—since 1999 ][ Susan Sontag, John Ashbery, Jamaica Kincaid, Laurie Anderson, Adrienne Rich, Joan Didion, John Edgar Wideman & more
Teacher, "Representations of the Holocaust"—a course on survivor testimony ][ my holocaust site
Click on the image for information about the book.