In this online workshop for youth ages 13-19, students will read a half dozen poems by Lucille Clifton, Maggie Smith, Tracy K. Smith, Joy Harjo, Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, and Natalie Diaz. In keeping with the Voices Forward theme of “Remembering Together,” each of the chosen poems reckons with how & what we remember, collectively and individually –– keeping in mind that the word re-member is the etymological opposite of dis-member, and thus remembering can be a move toward healing and becoming whole.

Each of the poems uses a variety of different formal approaches & techniques, (lineation, extended metaphor, erasure, abecedarian, etc.) stretching and bending the language while doing so. After deepening our understanding of how the poems achieve their effect through reading and discussion, we will then emulate and play with some of these techniques, seeing which ones might “fit” in each young writers’ toolbox to be put to future use in their own work.