The Poem as a Reservoir for Grief
Dates: Sep 8 - Oct 5
Format: Online Workshop (asynchronous)
Loss. Bereavement. Grief. They are a part of life. But as Tess Gallagher points out in her essay—the title of which I’ve borrowed for this workshop—we live in a culture bereft of time to grieve:
As more and more of contemporary life is forced into the present or "now" moment, there seem to be fewer mechanisms which allow the past to be fully absorbed and lived once it has ''happened.'' It has become harder to experience grief since it is a retroactive emotion which requires subsequent returns to the loss over a period of time.
Written in 1984, these words still ring true today—perhaps even more so, considering the staggering number of losses/atrocities we’re exposed to on any given day and the tsunami of information, images, and requests for action/productivity we’re subjected to 24/7 online.
Gallagher further observes:
It is not simply release from sufferings we need, but understanding of loss and, beyond understanding, the need to feel, as in the word "mourning," the ongoing accumulation of bodily and psychic communication which loss initiates in us … Poems have long been a place where one could count on being allowed to feel, in a bodily sense, our connection to loss.
In this four-week workshop, with Gallagher’s essay as our guide, we will explore losses big and small, profound and mundane, personal and universal. We will use poetry to hold a loss against our cheek and feel its particular texture, to taste its full range of flavors from bitter to sweet. We will study the elegy and the anti-elegy, the dirge, the blues poem, the lament, and even the humorous poem—think Billy Collins’s poem “On Turning Ten.”
Each week will include a craft lesson, discussion topics, sample poems illustrating the craft lesson, and both generative and revision-based writing prompts.
Dates: Sep 8 - Oct 5
Format: Online Workshop (asynchronous)
Loss. Bereavement. Grief. They are a part of life. But as Tess Gallagher points out in her essay—the title of which I’ve borrowed for this workshop—we live in a culture bereft of time to grieve:
As more and more of contemporary life is forced into the present or "now" moment, there seem to be fewer mechanisms which allow the past to be fully absorbed and lived once it has ''happened.'' It has become harder to experience grief since it is a retroactive emotion which requires subsequent returns to the loss over a period of time.
Written in 1984, these words still ring true today—perhaps even more so, considering the staggering number of losses/atrocities we’re exposed to on any given day and the tsunami of information, images, and requests for action/productivity we’re subjected to 24/7 online.
Gallagher further observes:
It is not simply release from sufferings we need, but understanding of loss and, beyond understanding, the need to feel, as in the word "mourning," the ongoing accumulation of bodily and psychic communication which loss initiates in us … Poems have long been a place where one could count on being allowed to feel, in a bodily sense, our connection to loss.
In this four-week workshop, with Gallagher’s essay as our guide, we will explore losses big and small, profound and mundane, personal and universal. We will use poetry to hold a loss against our cheek and feel its particular texture, to taste its full range of flavors from bitter to sweet. We will study the elegy and the anti-elegy, the dirge, the blues poem, the lament, and even the humorous poem—think Billy Collins’s poem “On Turning Ten.”
Each week will include a craft lesson, discussion topics, sample poems illustrating the craft lesson, and both generative and revision-based writing prompts.
Dates: Sep 8 - Oct 5
Format: Online Workshop (asynchronous)
Loss. Bereavement. Grief. They are a part of life. But as Tess Gallagher points out in her essay—the title of which I’ve borrowed for this workshop—we live in a culture bereft of time to grieve:
As more and more of contemporary life is forced into the present or "now" moment, there seem to be fewer mechanisms which allow the past to be fully absorbed and lived once it has ''happened.'' It has become harder to experience grief since it is a retroactive emotion which requires subsequent returns to the loss over a period of time.
Written in 1984, these words still ring true today—perhaps even more so, considering the staggering number of losses/atrocities we’re exposed to on any given day and the tsunami of information, images, and requests for action/productivity we’re subjected to 24/7 online.
Gallagher further observes:
It is not simply release from sufferings we need, but understanding of loss and, beyond understanding, the need to feel, as in the word "mourning," the ongoing accumulation of bodily and psychic communication which loss initiates in us … Poems have long been a place where one could count on being allowed to feel, in a bodily sense, our connection to loss.
In this four-week workshop, with Gallagher’s essay as our guide, we will explore losses big and small, profound and mundane, personal and universal. We will use poetry to hold a loss against our cheek and feel its particular texture, to taste its full range of flavors from bitter to sweet. We will study the elegy and the anti-elegy, the dirge, the blues poem, the lament, and even the humorous poem—think Billy Collins’s poem “On Turning Ten.”
Each week will include a craft lesson, discussion topics, sample poems illustrating the craft lesson, and both generative and revision-based writing prompts.
