[This is a Virtual Ruby* event, taking place over Zoom. Join us: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82938403994?pwd=RVgySVhUY0RMandzUXBFUFpwN3VSUT09. Nonmembers are welcome to join; please donate if you are able!]

What might poetry provide for us in times of immense uncertainty and brokenness? How might certain poetic/aesthetic concepts help us not only to tolerate but to integrate the state of unknowing, precarity, and vulnerability into our daily lives? This gathering is for anyone—poets and non-poets—who would like to explore how poetry can also be a way of entering the day and navigating our world. We will introduce and discuss concepts like negative capability, bewilderment, wabi sabi, and kintsugi; we will read poems together; and we will participate in a guided poetic ritual.

About Jennifer S. Cheng

Jennifer S. Cheng is the author of MOON: LETTERS, MAPS, POEMS, selected by Bhanu Kapil for the Tarpaulin Sky Award and named a Publishers Weekly “Best Book of 2018”; HOUSE A, selected by Claudia Rankine for the Omnidawn Poetry Prize; and INVOCATION: AN ESSAY, an image-text chapbook. She received awards and fellowships from Brown University, the University of Iowa, the National Endowment for the Arts, the U.S. Fulbright program, Kundiman, Bread Loaf, and the Academy of American Poets. She is currently teaching a hybrid craft course, rooted in bewilderment, at the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. www.jenniferscheng.com

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*While we shelter in place during the Covid19 pandemic, The Ruby's physical location will be closed. As a collective, we'll continue to gather online for virtual workshops, events, and discussions. All are welcome to join us for these events. * For those who can afford it and would like to support The Ruby during this uncertain time, we are offering 3 tiers of virtual membership: $5/week, $15/week, and $25/week. (Though we have some money in our emergency savings account to get us through the next little while, we're pretty nervous about the future, and how long this might go on for.) Please help only if it's feasible for you. If you're in a tough time financially right now, we absolutely get it. Please, take care of yourself and stay connected to this community so we can help.

Here are the tiers of virtual membership (use these links to sign up):

$5/week - https://www.joinit.org/o/the-ruby/aRsJyABygL4FvvEJT

$15/week - https://www.joinit.org/o/the-ruby/o56ggrnNNx9rzn6AA

$25/week - https://www.joinit.org/o/the-ruby/q37HfmWSQMoLzPt4p

Want to make a one-time donation of more or less? We can still accept donations through last year's GoFundMe. Link is here.

Our Virtual Ruby calendar will be updated as events are added.

[Virtual Ruby] Poetry in the Time of the Pandemic