An all-levels generative virtual workshop with Halee Kirkwood!
Matsuo Basho wrote that “the cry of the cicada / Gives us no sign / That presently it will die.” Insects are notoriously revolted; they creep, they crawl, they swarm, they build. They are verb incarnate, constantly surprising us with the freaky little ways they move around in the world. Every continent on earth—even Antarctica!—harbors insects, embodying a sense of global interconnected-ness. They are essential to our food chain on earth while at the same time carrying death and disease. What can the brute resiliency of insect life forms teach our own poems of resilience? How can our poems celebrate the unseen, the hated, the strange? In this workshop, we will draft poems that examine fear and fascination, that look to insect life as emblems of resistance and liberation. Reading poets such as Bao Phi, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Robin Gow write tenderly about silverfish, cockroaches, and lantern flies, we will learn how to see past our gut reaction to the strangest of the insect kingdom, celebrating these beings for the amazing creatures they really are.
About the Instructor: Halee Kirkwood is a genre-fluid writer living in Minneapolis. They were an inaugural and returning Indigenous Nations Poets (IN-NA-PO) fellow, a Tin House Summer Workshop alum, a 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, and a 2022 Minnesota State Arts Board grant recipient. Kirkwood is the winner of the 2022 James Welch Poetry Prize, published with Poetry Northwest. Their poetry and prose can be found in Prairie Schooner, Poetry Magazine, Poem-A-Day, Ecotone, and others. They are a first generation direct descendant of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe.
**This workshop will take place on Zoom.**
