Writing on Grief: Transforming Loss Into Art

The author of Indigo (Copper Canyon Press, 2020) reflects on how writers can turn grief into literature.
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The author of Indigo (Copper Canyon Press, 2020) reflects on how writers can turn grief into literature.
The REC.ON Ecovillage Artist & Writing Residency offers two- to four-week residencies year-round to poets, fiction writers, creative nonfiction writers, and translators in the picturesque village of La Mata de Bolaimí near the Sierra María–Los Vélez mountains in Andalucía, Spain. Residents are provided with a private single- or double-occupancy room in a restored rural house and have shared access to a kitchen, a living room, a permaculture garden, and outdoor writing spaces. Residents can also work in the REC.ON gallery, a coworking and exhibition space for focused writing.
REC.ON Ecovillage Artist & Writing Residency, Paraje Bolaimí s/n 04820 Vélez Rubio, Almería, Spain. Paulina Bielecka, Owner.
The List og Land Northern Lights Residency offers three-week residencies from October 1 to October 24 and from November 1 to November 24 at Laugaból Farm on Arnarfjörður, a fjord in Iceland, to poets, fiction writers, creative nonfiction writers, and translators. Residents who lodge at the farmhouse are provided with a double-occupancy room, two shared bathrooms, a full kitchen, a dining room, and a living room.
List og Land Northern Lights Residency, Laugaból 0, 466 Bildadalur, Westfjörds, Iceland. (323) 552-1294. Leslie Schwartz, Cofounder.
The Kaatsbaan Weekend Retreats offer three-day residencies from October 3 to October 5 and from November 21 to November 23 at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, a 153-acre artist sanctuary in Tivoli, New York, to poets, fiction writers, creative nonfiction writers, and translators. Residents are provided with private motel-style rooms, which include a desk, an en suite bathroom, and views of the surrounding countryside, in the Dancers’ Inn. Residents may also lodge in a two-bedroom unit at the Gatehouse Apartments, which includes a private entrance and bathroom, a full kitchen, and a living area.
Kaatsbaan Weekend Retreats, Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, P.O. Box 482, Tivoli, NY 12583. (845) 757-5106, ext. 17. Adam Weinert, Residency and Events Manager.
In this Poetry.LA video, Altadena co-poets laureate Lester Graves Lennon and Sehba Sarwar read a selection of their poems and speak about how the Eaton Fire has affected their lives and community. Lennon and Sarwar were recently awarded a fellowship from the Academy of American Poets to launch their poetry project “After the Fires: Healing from Histories.”
“There are names for what binds us: / strong forces, weak forces. / Look around, you can see them.” Danusha Laméris reads and talks about “For What Binds Us” by Jane Hirshfield and shares why this poem is meaningful to her for “The Poem I Wish I Had Read” series in this video from the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College.
“I like the idea of action writing, putting text on the floor and playing with arrangement like abstract expressionist painting.” —Anne Waldman, author of Mesopotopia
“I often think of poetry as something that is beyond the true and the false,” says poet and critic Michael Leong on what he feels is true about the art of poetry in a Literary Hub interview with Peter Mishler. “Poetry’s strangeness is so tied up with how it productively messes with what we previously thought were stable truths and stable falsehoods.” Taking inspiration from this notion that poetry exists in a space that is “beyond the true and the false,” write a poem that explores a seemingly stable truth or falsehood, one that you may be interested in interrogating and undermining. Experiment with using surrealist imagery, playing with expanding far out into the white space of the page to stretch further into the incongruity of your subject.