Writing Craft 2: Poetry and Pain, with Margarita Saona

Award-winning poet MARGARITA SAONA will offer you a path to create poetry from experiences of physical illness and alienation.

This 90-minute workshop will provide a safe space to explore the connection between physical and mental ailments and experiences with health systems. This discussion is grounded on the idea that pain and illness can generate “aesthetic” experiences by reading poems written both by health professionals and by patients.

After the initial discussion, we will respond to writing prompts related to the sense of alienation caused by disease, the difficulty of receiving or communicating a diagnosis, and the estrangement of medical jargon and the clinical environment. Our goal would be to have two or three budding poems at the end of the workshop.

Trigger Warning: We will address traumatic physical and emotional experiences.

MARGARITA SAONA is an award-winning Peruvian poet and fiction-writer, and a professor of Latin American literature and culture at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Register via EventBrite HERE