Join us: Thursday, June 10 – 7:00 – 8:00pm
Special Event Registration Here
Experiments Toward Else: In this workshop we will consider the ways that reading or writing a poem might be an act of resuscitation. An awakening of one’s “sight,” mind and questions. We will read the work of writers whose texts are original, strange, wondering, and will consider the powers of such elements (and here I am hearing Paul Celan in “The Meridian” translated by Pierre Joris: “The poem estranges. It estranges by its existence, by the mode of its existence, it stands opposite and against one, voiceful and voiceless simultaneously, as language, as language setting itself free…” Participants: please come ready to read, experiment, write. Each participant should bring a copy of a meaningful, mysterious, powerful/potent, resonant photo from their personal album or archive.
Seema Reza is a poet and essayist and the author of two books: A Constellation of Half-Lives and When the World Breaks Open. She holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Writing and Community Building from Goddard College. In 2010 Seema began working with service members, veterans, and their families at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and has since developed a unique multi-hospital arts program that encourages the use of the arts as a tool for narration, self-care and socialization. In 2015, the USO of Metropolitan Washington-Baltimore awarded Seema the Col John Gioia Patriot Award for her work with service members in military hospitals. Seema is a 2019 George W. Bush Institute Stand-To Veteran Leadership Scholar.