From Anecdote to Revelation: Poetry as/of Self Discovery with Subhaga Crystal Bacon (Zoom)
For many of us, our own life stories, sometimes reduced to anecdotes by memory and the passage of time, are ways we know ourselves. They’re touchstones of a particular time, place, and/or experience. And yet our memories can become static, like snapshots. When we shape these life experiences into poems, we’re engaged in the act of discovery. Why is this story important? What did we learn from it? What might others learn? How did it surprise us in showing up? The elements of poetry—sound, image, form, metaphoric language—provide opportunities to find surprising new truths buried by time. Whether lyric or narrative or a deft blending of the two, writing poems from our own lives can be an act of self-discovery that leads us to a new way of knowing ourselves.
In this generative workshop, suitable for writers at all levels, I’ll provide examples of poems that achieve this transformation from anecdote to revelation including poems of my own as well as by Lucia Perillo, Heidi Seaborn, Jessica Cuello, and others. We’ll extract writing prompts from our discussion for your own writing.
Subhaga Crystal Bacon (they/them), is the author of five collections of poetry including, A Brief History of My Sex Life, from Lily Poetry Review Books; the Lambda Literary finalist, Transitory, 2023, winner of the BOA Editions, Ltd. Isabella Gardner Award for Poetry; Surrender of Water in Hidden Places, winner of the Red Flag Poetry Chapbook Prize, 2023, released in an expanded second edition in the summer of 2024. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, Subhaga is an AWP Writer to Writer mentor and teaching artist working in schools and libraries with youth and adults, as well as private students. Their work appears or is forthcoming in a variety of print and online journals including Terrain, The Diode Poetry Journal, The Bellevue Literary Review, Indianapolis Review, Smartish Pace, and others. A Queer elder, they live in rural north central Washington on unceded Methow land.
