And What is Love? Dismantling the Beloved. A Poetry Workshop with Ayesha Raees (Zoom)
Please note that this Monday Night Poetry Workshop will run from 6:00-8:00 p.m. (ET) on July 13, 20, 27, August 3, 10, and 17.
We often think about love as romance, conventionally sexual, partnered, based in marriage, with words often strewn as addresses for the beloved. In this workshop, we aim to dismantle the idea of conventionality and move towards expanding our foundation of devotion, coming to terms with our own empowering definition of loving.
We will be reading and writing towards forms of devotion such as odes, elegies, aubades, ghazals, sonnets etc. while exploring how our context can be amplified in what form and how, if at all. We will also be concentrating on the ideologies of the beloved in the poem, shedding light to the possibilities of how expansive a love poem can be, and how it can be intertwined from person to nature to self. Students will be generating work and workshopping during this short course, with a goal of nurturing their own intentionalities towards writing love poems as per their own definitions and care. Each class will hold a concentrated writing session, discussion, and workshop, with a goal of building care and community with another as well. All levels of experience welcome.
BIO
Ayesha Raees عائشہ رئیس is a poet and artist identifying as a hybrid creating hybrid poetry through hybrid forms. Her work strongly revolves around issues of belonging and dislocation, G/god and spirituality, and beauty::cruelty while possessing a strong agency for decolonial, anti-violence, and anti-erasure practices. She edits poetry at The Margins and has received endorsements from Asian American Writers Workshop, Kundiman, Brooklyn Poets, UNESCO, Millay Colony For The Arts and elsewhere. Her work has been published extensively, including Poetry Northwest, Pleiades, The Nation, Poets.org and others. Her first book of poems Coining A Wishing Tower won the Broken River Prize and was an Indies Award Finalist. Originally from Lahore, she is based in New York City.
