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Monday Night Poetry Workshop with Omotara James (via Zoom)


Write your personal politic. In this generative workshop we will read, discuss and write poems that use lyric to complicate the discourse of politics: the politics of desire, death, family, identity, the body… Do you remember your first curiosities? Your first disappointments? Your first unadulterated joys? Let’s explore your early poetics and the ethos that created you. Let’s interrogate how your early influences affect your current process of poem-making. Write the poems about the world that only you can write. This workshop will include guided meditations, sensory prompts and related memory-work. All participants are encouraged to keep a daily journal during the duration of this six-week workshop.

NB: This workshop will be taught on Zoom and will start on Monday March 13 and end on Monday April 17th, 6:30-8:30pm EST. The link will be sent to the email you use to register at the time you enroll in the class. Please save this link to your calendar so you have it on hand every week. It will be sent to you again the day before the first class starts. This class will be capped at 10 students.  Please review the course policies page before registering for any classes. Please email ask@writerscenter.org with any questions.

Omotara James is the author of the poetry collection, Song of My Softening, forthcoming from Alice James Books, and the chapbook, “Daughter Tongue,” selected by African Poetry Book Fund, in collaboration with Akashic Books, for the 2018 New Generation African Poets Box Set. James’ poems appear in print and digital journals, including The Poetry FoundationThe Paris ReviewThe Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day series, The BelieverLiterary HubPoetry Society of America. Her work has been recently anthologised and selected for inclusion in Embodied: An Intersectional Feminist Comics Poetry Anthology (A Wave Blue World, 2021), Best Small Fictions (Sonder Press, 2020), Islands Are But Mountains (Platypus Press, 2019). James is the recipient of a City Artist Corps Grant; a CRCF Literature Award; a NYSCA/NYFA Poetry Fellowship; an Artist Relief grant; a 92Y/ Discovery Poetry Award; a Bread Loaf Katharine Bakeless Nason Award in Poetry; a 2019 finalist for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize; the inaugural Thomas Lux Scholarship from The Palm Beach Poetry Festival; a Nancy P. Schnader Academy of American Poets Prize; and residency fellowships from Cave Canem Foundation and Lambda Literary, among other awards and recognitions. Born in Britain, she is the daughter of Nigerian and Trinidadian immigrants. She has lived in England, Scotland and was raised primarily in America. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from Hofstra University and an MFA in Poetry from New York University. Former art therapist and social worker in the field of Harm Reduction, and has instructed workshops at NYU, The 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center, Cave Canem Foundation, Queens Public Library, and elsewhere.

Event Location and Ticket Information

Date: Monday, April 10, 2023 - Tuesday, April 11, 2023
Times: 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm

Ticket pricing:

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Presenter: Hudson Valley Writers Center
Presenter Phone: 914.332.5953
Presenter Website: writerscenter.org