What To Do With the Memory: Finding a Way In
TUESDAY, JANUARY 16, 2024
5:30 PM 8:30 PM
USM AND ONLINE PORTLAND (MAP)
A HYBRID Poetry Workshop
ALL LEVELS
One day while walking home from the M train in Brooklyn, I saw a man stealing fruit on the corner of Myrtle Ave and Broadway. In a city of more than 6 million people, nothing that happened was surprising. But ever the poet, I wrote it down in my phone anyway and thought surely this mundane, very New York experience might find its way into a poem. Fast forward to a snowed-in January day, I thought I would use the quiet it would bring to sit down and write a poem. I looked through my phone and saw the line I had recorded months before, “As I watch a man steal fruit on the corner of Myrtle Ave and Broadway.” I wrote it at the top of the blank document, and almost without thought my next line was, “I want to know what to do with the memory.” These seemingly simple lines would then become the entrance into the poem, the Moby Dick of poems, the one I had been trying to write for over a decade about the traumatic event in my youth that shaped my sad girl psyche. I had entered the memory through a side door, one I didn’t know existed. The man stealing fruit was the door. In this workshop, we will explore our very own side doors, the way into the memory that haunts. We will read Catherine Barnett, Sharon Olds, and Marie Howe. This will be a generative space to explore and plant seeds for future poems.
+ PLEASE NOTE This workshop will occur IN-PERSON AND ONLINE. The week of the workshop, attendees will be emailed the exact location of the class and a zoom link.