The Wounded Line: A Guide to Writing Poems of Trauma

A writing guide to processing trauma through the poetic form, Jehanne Dubrow, a well respected writer, speaker, guide, and spouse of a career military officer, offers an experienced and knowledgeable voice to aspiring writers and those working through trauma.

In this accessible and inspiring guide, acclaimed writer Jehanne Dubrow draws on how the study of trauma has defined both her creative work and her teaching. The Wounded Line, the first craft-based writing book of its kind, is grounded not only in research but also in heart, in the belief that even our deepest hurts can find a lyric form. Leading poets through a series of practical approaches to representing pain on the page, Dubrow provides readers with narrative techniques, rhetorical structures, and formal strategies that can be applied to any trauma, from the global and the historical to the intimate and the personal. The Wounded Line encourages poets at all stages to address the difficult, discomfiting questions that ache within each of us.

Jehanne Dubrow is the author of ten poetry collections and three books of creative nonfiction, including Exhibitions: Essays on Art and Atrocity (UNM Press). She is a professor of creative writing and a Distinguished Research Professor at the University of North Texas.