This workshop explores how to write poetry rooted in activism that is persuasive rather than alienating. Effective political poetry requires more than an opinionated stance; thoughtfulness, accuracy, and authenticity are also necessary to win over readers.
To understand this balance, we will study overtly political work such as Lucille Clifton and Danez Smith alongside more gentle poems of social change by Ross Gay and Joy Harjo in order to generate our own poems of justice.
PRESENTERMarci Calabretta Cancio-Bello is the author of Hour of the Ox (University of Pittsburgh, 2016), which won the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry and Florida Book Award bronze medal for poetry, and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Award. She and E. J. Koh co-translated The Lightest Motorcycle in the World by Korean poet Yi Won, forthcoming June 2021 from Zephyr Press. A transracial, transnational adoptee, she has received fellowships from Kundiman and the American Literary Translators Association. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, where she was a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Fellow. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Kenyon Review Online, Best Small Fictions, and more. She serves as the poetry editor for Hyphen magazine and as a program coordinator for Miami Book Fair. More at www.marcicalabretta.com.
Details: Workshop for Teens: Poetry & Justice takes place Friday, July 16 and Friday, July 23 from 12-1pm remotely through Zoom.
