Haunting Returns: The Poetry of Pastness, Memory and Self

Unearth what haunts you in this workshop geared towards helping you return to your authentic, experimental, poetic inner voice. How are we tied to the past—to history, time, and space? What is haunting, and how might it embody ideas of erasure, absence, suspension, and refusal? What’s made you into a ghost of your former self? Together we’ll consider what to do with the liminal, unruly, and spectral inheritances—the parts of the story, of us—that don’t fit neatly in time and space.

This workshop will center poetry, while also exploring creative non-fiction and theory. Using texts, short movement exercises, and writing prompts, we’ll begin to tease out the past that preoccupies and possesses our writing. Texts from writers such as Lucile Cliffton, Eve Tuck, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Fahima Ife, and Dionne Brand allow us to examine how history, haunting, and loss are contoured by race, gender, sexuality, queerness, diaspora, and colonialism, while writing exercises and peer-to-peer feedback will orient us towards a rich reframing of what it means to be alive, and to return to oneself.

Open to writers of all levels. This is a 2-week workshop, with a 2-hour session each week. Please prepare for approximately 1-2 hours of work between sessions which might include completing a few short readings and generating 2-3 pages of rough, drafted writing.

This 2-week workshop meets on Thursdays from 6-8pm at LitArts RI on the following dates:

Thurs, Dec 4

Thurs, Dec 11

About Your Teaching Artist

NAIMAH ZULMADELLE PÉTIGNY (she/her) is a Black feminist scholar, dancer, poet, and

abolitionist educator. She is an Assistant Professor of Literary Arts and Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design and holds the Schiller Family Assistant Professorship in Race in Art and Design. Naimah writes toward expansive, experimental notions of Blackness as she centers questions of gender, pastness, loss, and erotics. Her current book project considers how we might be lovingly adorned by loss, instead of anchored by it. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in Commoning Ethnography, The Walker Art Center Magazine, Agitate! Unsettling Knowledges Journal, Routledge International Handbook of Gender and Feminist Geographies, and Cultural Studies.

Community Access Lottery

LitArts RI offers a lottery for free admission to those who could not otherwise afford to attend. The lottery closes 2 weeks before each workshop, at which time entrants will be notified if they are a recipient of one of the free seats.

To enter the lottery, press the red "Get tickets" button at the top right of your screen, then scroll down to add a "Community Access Lottery Ticket" to your cart and check out.

Safe and Brave Space Policy

Writing workshops can be vulnerable spaces. As a literary arts organization, LitArts RI is committed to providing a safe, brave, inclusive and accessible space to all participants, regardless of race, ethnicity, class, citizenship status, age, size, abilities, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. Be sensitive, be supportive, be respectful and engage with care. Discriminatory, hateful, and threatening content will not be tolerated; we ask that you bring any concerns to our attention immediately.

Accessibility

LitArts RI is wheelchair accessible. The organization is actively committed to cultivating a community that values and reflects diversity, equity and inclusivity and to providing programming that is accessible to all attendees. Please let us know about any accommodations we can make to allow you to participate fully in this event.

Health Safety Guidelines

If you have tested positive for Covid-19 within a few days of attending an event at LitArts RI, please contact Staff so we can let others know of possible exposure. We ask that you wait 14 days or until testing negative to return to the Center.

This activity is made possible in part by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, through an appropriation by the Rhode Island General Assembly and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and by a Project Fund grant from Providence Art, Culture and Tourism.