POETRY WORKSHOP

THESE ARE THE MATERIALS

Brynn Saito

Poetry takes us deep into sensation and to the edge of our senses. How can connecting with the materials of our life—the textures of our day, fragments of sound and memory, detritus of dreams—enliven our poems and reveal our desires? What artifacts and anchors—environments, objects, senses—act as portals to our creative process? Through writing exercises and conversation, we’ll explore the poem as “an instrument for embodied experience,” as Adrienne Rich characterized it. “A poem can’t free us from the struggle for existence,” wrote Rich, “but it can uncover the desires and appetites buried under the accumulating emergencies of our lives.” Poetry is a portal: to desire, silence, truth, ghosts, grief. And the materiality of our embodied aliveness is a gateway, a threshold to poetry’s mysterious and necessary offerings. Along with engaging in generative prompts and discussion, we’ll spend each day reading and providing feedback on participants’ poems. Ultimately, the invitation is to come away with tools for revitalizing your practice and an expanded understanding of poetry’s possibilities and power.