Class Description
How do our life experiences—sacred, mundane, and profane—shape our identity, live within our bodies, and give rise to our poetry?
In the way that our bodies carry our life experiences, poetry can be a vehicle for exploring our relationship to them. In this workshop, we will experiment with craft tools like voice, imagery, point of view, language and form to support the self-exploration that gives rise to our unique, embodied voice. Through our personal poetry, we can deepen our understanding and appreciation of the diversity and complexity within us, and in those around us. From this place, our stories become part of a dialogue within a larger collective. We will explore how our life experiences related to race, gender identity, war, trauma, and addiction can be explored through poetry, and held by our poems. This class will include a focus on craft technique, provide generative writing prompts, poem readings, and group discussion. We’ll also engage in some in-class workshopping. By the end, you will have generated a few beginnings of new poems, deepened your craft knowledge, explored new ways of approaching your poetry, and will inhabit your writing life in renewed ways.
Please bring a draft of a body/identity themed poem you are currently working on.
Thanks to the excellent literary citizenship of our donors, scholarships are available for all GrubStreet classes. To apply, click the gray "APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIP" button. In order to be considered for a scholarship, you must complete your application at least one week before the start date of a class. Please await our scholarship committee's decision before registering for the class. We cannot hold spots in classes, so the sooner you apply, the better. Scholarships cannot be applied retroactively.
For more detailed information about GrubStreet scholarships, including how to contribute to scholarship funds for other students, click here.
This class will take place using Zoom videoconferencing. After registering, a yellow Resources tab will appear in this section containing a link to join class. Please note that you will need to be logged into view the Resources tab.
Zoom Participation:
In our experience, the intimate nature of a writing workshop benefits from on-camera participation. Students are of course welcome to turn their camera off whenever they need to, but it is a community norm for cameras to be on most of the time. You can learn more about using Zoom here.
Zoom Accessibility:
You can enable closed captioning at any time during the meeting by clicking the CC button at the bottom of the screen. If you'd like to access the transcript after class, please make sure to let your instructor ahead of time that you'd like a copy.