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Writing About What You’re Afraid to Write About @ The Ollom Art Festival
November 14, 2018
$20
I am very excited to be part of this year’s Ollom Art Festival, which will take place from November 10 to November 15. The theme of the event is “The Hole Project: Mining Portals of Vulnerability,” and I will be giving a workshop called “Writing About What You’re Afraid to Write About” that will take place in Manhattan on November 14th (time and location to follow). Here’s the description:
Why write about something you fear? To name it and, in naming it, to gain control over it. To learn how not to be afraid. Or, perhaps, to learn how to live with fear. Why try to make poetry from your fear, to make it beautiful with words? Not the straightforward loveliness of surfaces, but the beauty that puts us in touch with the full depth of what it means to be human, that does not force us to choose between it and ugliness, but rather allows us to experience both beauty and ugliness as they always already exist within us, and in the world around us. Why? Because while a poem may pronounce judgment on what we fear, it does not judge us for fearing it. Poetry is not politics, and it is not therapy, but finding the words that will make your fear beautiful is an act of hope and, therefore, of a kind of healing. In this workshop, we will explore strategies for bringing that hope and that healing into our lives and our work, whether as poets and writers, or as people who simply want to find ways of saying what they haven’t, till now, been able to say.
Space will be limited so please register early, once the information has posted. (I will, of course, send out a reminder). The price of admission for the workshop will be $20. You’ll also be able, if you wish, to buy a pass to all workshops.
Ollom Art is an organization worth supporting. You can buy tickets to the opening gala here. There’s a 20% discount if you buy early.