PSNY Virtual Workshop: Somatically Aware Poetics

With poet India Lena González!

In movement-based practice, somatic (“of or relating to the living body”) work focuses on the internal experience of any given person, much like we do in poetry, rather than the end result of the movement. Writing is often thought of as a purely mental activity, but what if we subvert that classic, academic understanding and ground our written work in the body: its pains and pleasures, its movement and rest? This workshop (meant for any and all bodies) will meld the physical with the emotional, mental, and spiritual work of writing poetry. Through a guided meditation scanning the entire body to inviting gentle movement into our limbs, and then hitting the page with freeing exercises, we will write together from a fully embodied place of being so that we may show up more completely to the page and find more authentic ways of writing into our selfhoods. We will use our time together to live in and explore the feeling of the writing process.

About the Instructor: India Lena González is a poet, editor, and multidisciplinary artist. She received her BA from Columbia University and her MFA from NYU’s Creative Writing program. Her work is published or forthcoming in American Chordata, The Brooklyn Review, Harvard Review, Lampblack, PANK, Pigeon Pages, and Poetry Northwest, among others. fox woman get out! (BOA Editions, 2023), selected by Aracelis Girmay as part of the Blessing the Boats Selections, is her debut poetry collection. India is also a professionally trained dancer, choreographer, and actor and has had the pleasure of performing at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, St. Mark’s Church, La Mama, New York Live Arts, and other such venues. She is the features editor of Poets & Writers Magazine.

* *This workshop will take place on Zoom.**