“What else should I have done?”: Embracing the Slow Poetic during a Pandemic

We’ve moved online! All workshops will be conducted through Zoom, an interactive platform that allows you to participate in exercises and contribute to group conversation in your workshops. The day before your workshop you’ll receive an email with a link to Zoom for your workshop session. 

Member Price: $65
Deadline to Register: July 24, 5 pm
Instructor: Karen vanMeenen

In sharing the richness of a quiet summer day, poet Mary Oliver watches a grasshopper eat out of her hand and asks, “what else should I have done?” After an initial period of online influencers flaunting the opportunity we have during sheltering in place to perfect old skills and to learn new ones, many of us have realized that this new-for-now normal asks something different, and perhaps offers the unexpected. Join us to read poems old and new and be inspired to write our own individual truths in response. We will honor uncertainty but focus on hope and in-the-moment observation. Participants will be provided a collection of poems by email in advance of the workshop.

Karen vanMeenen has directed Writers & Books’ Rochester Reads program since 2001. A senior lecturer at Rochester Institute of Technology, teaching courses in Writing, Literature, and Contemporary Media Art, she has served as the Editor of the media arts journal Afterimage for more than 25 years. She edited the collections Giving Sorrow Words: Poems of Strength and Solace; Light At the End: Poems, by Lyn Lifshin; and Nevermore: Poetry and Prose by Edgar Allan Poe. She is certified as a writing therapist and serves on the executive board of the National Association for Poetry Therapy and as the Book Reviews Editor for the Journal of Poetry Therapy. vanMeenen has Master of Arts degrees in Transformative Language Arts and in Media Studies, and is completing a PhD program in Philosophy, Art & Critical Thought at the European Graduate School.