Poet as Witness to History: A Generative Writing Class with Tina Cane (via Zoom)

“History is the function of any one of us,” Charles Olson once said. In this workshop we will consider the poet as a witness to history and poetry as document. We will read and discuss poets from various periods in order to understand how their cultural moment impacted their writing and what impact their writing exerted on their era and beyond. We will act and write as witnesses to our own histories while exploring what we think “history” means. The poets whose work we will explore may include Pablo Neruda, Frederico Garcia Lorca, Anne Sexton, Mahmoud Darwish, Victor Hugo, Nicole Sealey, Adrienne Rich, Anna Akhmatova and Layli Longsoldier, among others.

NB: This class will be taught on Zoom (Saturday, June 15, 12:30-2:30 PM ET) and will be capped at 15 students. Registrants will receive the Zoom link to the email address they use to register. It will arrive immediately after registration so please check your spam folder if you do not receive it. It will also be sent the day before class as a reminder. Please review the course policies page before registering for any classes. Please email misty@writerscenter.org with any questions.

All HVWC scholarship applications will be available on May 1 and will be due on May 15 for all summer/fall 2024 classes.

Tina Cane serves as the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island where she is the founder/director of Writers-in-the-Schools, RI. In her capacity as poet laureate, Cane has established her state’s first youth poetry ambassador program in partnership with Rhode Island Center for the Book, and has brought the Poetry-in-Motion program from the New York City Transit System to Rhode Island’s state-wide buses. Cane is the author of The Fifth Thought, Dear Elena: Letters for Elena Ferrante, poems with art by Esther Solondz (Skillman Books, 2016), Once More With Feeling (Veliz Books 2017), Body of Work (Veliz Books, 2019), and Year of the Murder Hornet (Veliz Books, 2022). In 2016, Tina received the Fellowship Merit Award in Poetry, from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. She was also a 2020 Poet Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets. Her debut novel-in-verse for young adults, Alma Presses Play (Penguin/Random House) was released in September 2021. Cane is also the creator/ curator of the distance reading series, Poetry is Bread, and the editor of Poetry is Bread: The Anthology (forthcoming from Nirala Press, 2023). Her second novel-in-verse for young readers, Are You Nobody Too? (Penguin/ Random House) will be published in summer 2024.