Former Tacoma poet laureate Tammy Robacker will lead a four-week poetry workshop beginning this weekend, courtesy of local writing group Write@253. The workshop series “Writing Poetry for the Five Senses” runs for the next four Sundays.

Robacker was chosen as the Tacoma poet laureate for 2010-11, and has since led numerous workshops and poetry events. Her poems, many of which are set in the Northwest and spring from events in her life, have been published in “The Vicissitudes” (Exquisite Disarray, 2010). The workshop series studies traditional poetic forms from sonnet and sestina to free-form non-rhyming, focusing on the use of metaphor and simile and appealing to the senses.

The series is hosted by Write@253, a new collective of Tacoma-area writers and writing teachers who volunteer writing tutoring in local schools and low-income neighborhoods and who have a temporary community writing location on the Hilltop thanks to the City of Tacoma/Shunpike collaboration Spaceworks, which puts arts groups rent-free into vacant properties.

“Pens on Fire” runs 2-4 p.m. Sept. 9, 16, 23 and 30 at 1310 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Tacoma. $20 per session/$70 for all four. Contact Write@253, write253.wordpress.com or mfox@tacomacc.edu