You whom I could not save
Listen to me.
—Czesław Miłosz
In times of crisis, when great loss meets great speechlessness, we look to poems for help. The world’s injustices abound, from climate change to gun violence to racial violence to war; in this five-week, generative workshop, we’ll utilize poetic techniques to cultivate power in our voices to respond to injustice. Students will practice writing in several modes, including erasure, elegy, ekphrasis and the prose poem. No matter the mode, our goal will be to write poems that empower the writer, demand attention and unite individuals. To ground our work and hone our skills, we’ll examine poems about power and protest by Don Mee Choi, lucille clifton, Ilya Kaminsky, W.S. Merwin, Matthew Olzmann, Morgan Parker, Solmaz Sharif and others.
We strongly encourage all in-person workshop participants to wear masks. Workshop participants may be required to wear masks as an accessibility accommodation for other participants or the instructor.
Workshop Details
Cindy Tran is the author of the poetry collection Sonnet Crown for NYC (2021), winner of the Thornwillow Patrons’ Prize. A recipient of fellowships from NYSCA/NYFA, the Poetry Project, and the Loft Literary Center, Cindy has presented her work at the Shed, the Lincoln Center and the BBC. Cindy’s poems have been published in Slice, the Margins, Copper Nickel and elsewhere.