Youth Workshop with Danez Smith

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Open to ages 19+. Registration is required and space is limited.

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

Since the beginning of time we’ve been obsessed with time. How does it move? How are we held within it? How can we move inside of it? Poets particularly seem obsessed with time and many have used the poem as a vehicle for time travel going forward into the future or backward into the past for healing, or revelation, or for pure play. In this workshop we’ll read a sampling of poets going forward, backwards, and deeper into time before designing our own machines (hint: it's poems) that will take us across the timeline to discover what waits for us and our writing if we dive into the stream of time and let it carry us further into our imaginations. 

Danez Smith

Danez Smith  is a Black, Queer, Poz writer & performer from St. Paul, MN. Danez is the author of Homie, (Graywolf Press, 2020), winner of the Minnesota Book Award, the Heartland Bookseller Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award, and a finalist for the National Book Award; they also wrote [insert] boy (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. They are the recipient of fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Montalvo Arts Center, Cave Canem, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Danez's work has been featured widely, appearing on platforms such as Buzzfeed, The New York Times, PBS NewsHour, Best American Poetry, Poetry Magazine, and on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Danez is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and is the co-host of VS with Franny Choi, a podcast sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and Postloudness. Find more at www.danezsmithpoet.com.