Description- While archival poetry is not new, African-American poets continue to dig into the historical and familial record to create powerful collections that speak with authority about America’s racist past and how it colors our present. Alison C. Rollins’ Black Bell incorporates documents and images from American slavery’s insinuation into daily life to show the banal and, at times, ridiculous nature of the horrible institution. Sheila Carter-Jones’ Every Hard Sweetness draws on the experience and documentary evidence of her father—a victim of the Jim Crow practice of wrongly incarcerating “difficult” Black men in mental institutions. In this group, we’ll read and discuss a few poems from each of these recently published poetry collections.
Aiden Hunt is a disabled writer, editor, poet and critic based in the Philadelphia, PA suburbs. Previously a freelance policy journalist and activist, he now focuses mainly on literary criticism. He is the creator and editor of the Philly Poetry Chapbook Review, an online literary journal dedicated to featuring poetry chapbooks through excerpts, reviews, and author features. Find out more at: PAidenHunt.com.
Description- In honor of National Poetry Month, we’ll read and discuss 10 poems on resilience and resistance. These are poems I both turn to and teach on a regular basis. Poems I find help anchor me in hope, especially in moments of doubt or despair. Throughout history, especially in moments of authoritarian uprising, mass violence, and social and political turmoil, poets and poetry have found their ways into the embers of our society to offer balms and breath in the wake of wrestling for our moral collective compass and soul. Together, we’ll explore the ways these 10 poems by 10 poets both contemporary and historical, offer us grounding to become and feel unshakeable, especially in tumultuous and shaky times. We will have a Zoom meeting on the first and last day. Participants will also receive optional writing prompts each day to deepen their engagement with each day’s poem, as well as offer a container for processing and generating fresh poetry as inspiration sparks.
Caroline Rothstein (she/her) is an internationally touring writer, poet, performer, educator, and documentary filmmaker. Her work has appeared in Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, InStyle, Narratively, The Guardian, BuzzFeed, MTV News, Hey Alma, and elsewhere. For more info, visit www.carolinerothstein.com
Particularly in the age of AI, how can we cultivate our children’s love of writing? In this book group for parents, we’ll discuss the tactics that each participant uses to motivate their kids to become fierce and passionate storytellers. The book itself, creative writing activity book The Monster-Building Handbook, is for your kids (best suited for 2nd–6th graders). However, the discussions are for the adults. We’ll discuss how to use the Handbook, as well as pool knowledge on how to work with kids to develop their unique voices.
Rowana Miller has been writing young adult fiction and working in writing education for more than a decade. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and has been awarded the 2023 Greater Philadelphia Social Innovation Award for Educational Entrepreneurship and the 2022 University of Pennsylvania President’s Engagement Prize. Her debut novel, Secrets of the Blue Hand Girls, is forthcoming from Sourcebooks in Fall 2025.
Kristen Rocha Aldrich is a nonprofit professional with over a decade of experience in program direction, primarily in the youth literacy space, and is currently the Director of Programs at Cosmic Writers (CW). Prior to joining the CW team, she founded the Early Childhood Education Department at the New York Public Library, led early literacy initiatives across the country at the Clinton Foundation, and worked with thousands of pediatricians to bring literacy education into well-child visits. Kristen holds both undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in Cultural Anthropology with a concentration in Education. Most importantly, she a mom to her very chatty 2.5 year-old daughter, Sofia.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but what about a painting or a sculpture, an assemblage? Georgia O’Keeffe once said, “I found I could say things with colors and shapes that I could not say any other way –– things I had no words for.” She’s suggesting that physical objects –– especially artistic ones –– can transcend the limitations of language. She’s probably right, but humans are language-dependent creatures, and there’s a long tradition of writers flipping the script, filtering through a thousand words to find ones worthy of adding something to the picture. In this group, we’ll look at various works of visual art & read the poems written in response to them, and we’ll try to generate ideas on the various ways language and visual art cross-pollinate.
Kevin Varrone is an amateur art maker & the author of the recent poetry chapbooks How to Count to Ten and Redemption Center, as well as three full-length collections, most recently, Box Score: An Autobiography. He was a 2013 Pew Fellow in the Arts and teaches writing at Temple University.