Elegy & Celebration: Writing Poems of Loss
Title: Elegy & Celebration: Writing Poems of Loss
Time: Sundays, October 2 & 9, 2022 @ 11am-1:30pm PST
Platform: Zoom
Tuition: $100
To register, email [email protected].
For more information, visit our Facebook event page at https://fb.me/e/3y7eeb9sH
About the Workshop:
The elegy in English, from the 1600s to its current articulations, has been employed as a genre of poetry in which poets mourn the dead. At the same time, directly or indirectly, poets often deploy this genre to critique and resist what they view as oppressive and violent aspects of their societies: religious, psychological, political, sexual, and moral.
In this class, we will read and write elegies, using our readings to inspire us and as a means of generating our own poems. We will explore the elegy’s function as a “work” of mourning for the dead, while widening this genre in order to reflect on not only the deceased, but on other kinds of loss we have experienced.
We will study diverse poems from poets such as W.S. Merwin, Dorianne Laux, Kevin Young, Ocean Vuong, Danez Smith, Marie Howe, Roger Reeves, Claudia Emerson, Walt Whitman, and many more to see how they successfully explore themselves and the world through the elegy.
THE WORKSHOP INCLUDES:
- Two 150-minute sessions with poem exploration and Q&A
- Multiple prompts and writing activities each session
- Bonus sample poems provided between sessions
- Active discussion of sample poems from diverse contemporary poets
- A chance to more intimately engage with a small, focused writing community