Grief Works: Writing through Ritual

Grief does not resolve. It returns: in images, in objects, in the specific weight of random moments. Learning to capture those recurring feelings can be some of the most important personal work we do. Poetry has long been the medium we turn to when exploring grief. And yet, too often we ask a single poem to contain everything inside of us. That can be an overwhelming, and at times discouraging, experience.

In this four-week online workshop, we will begin from a different premise: that the most powerful thing about writing through loss – of peoples, homes, ways of life and otherwise – is not finishing a single piece, but exploring what emerges from a sustained ritual practice. Drawing on the work of poets including Victoria Chang, CAConrad, Ross Gay, and Jack Gilbert, Grief Works will explore the long history of grief-writing rituals in poetry and the collections that grew from them.

By the end of the course, you will have a wealth of examples of poets who have healed and made magic from their grief, and hopefully experience firsthand what returning to the page can reveal. To fully experience this workshop, we ask each participant to dedicated 30 minutes to 1 hour of work between sessions. A similarly brief optional assignment and handout will be provided a few days before the first class.

Instructor

Warren C. Longmire is a Negro poet, performer, and technologist from North Philadelphia. A co-founder of the Excelano Project Spoken Word Collective, his work has appeared in Action, Spectacle, The Cleveland Review of Books, and The American Poetry Review. He was featured in The Best American Poetry 2021 (selected by Tracy K. Smith) and A Black Philadelphia Reader: African American Writings About the City of Brotherly Love. His latest book, Bird/Diz [an erased history of bebop], was published by Bunny Presse in 2022. He is currently completing his MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.