Thank you for joining us for this session and celebrating the two-year anniversary of our Virtual Group Sessions!

For this session we read an excerpt from Gate A-4 by Naomi Shihab Nye, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about something that can still happen.”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday April 4th at 6pm EDT,  with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Gate A-4 by, Naomi Shihab Nye

Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning
my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement:
"If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please
come to the gate immediately."

Well—one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just
like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. "Help,"
said the flight agent. "Talk to her. What is her problem? We
told her the flight was going to be late and she did this."

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly.
"Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-
se-wee?" The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly
used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled
entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the
next day. I said, "No, we're fine, you'll get there, just later, who is
picking you up? Let's call him."

We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would
stay with his mother till we got on the plane and ride next to
her. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just
for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while
in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I
thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know
and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling of her life, patting my knee,
answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool
cookies—little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and
nuts—from her bag—and was offering them to all the women at the gate.
To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the
lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same powdered
sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

And then the airline broke out free apple juice from huge coolers and two
little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they
were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend—
by now we were holding hands—had a potted plant poking out of her bag,
some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradi-
tion. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This
is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that
gate—once the crying of confusion stopped—seemed apprehensive about
any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.

This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

Naomi Shihab Nye, “Gate A-4” from Honeybee. Copyright © 2008 by Naomi Shihab Nye

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at the painting Untitled 2009, by Kerry James Marshall, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about something unfinished”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Wednesday March 30th 6pm EDT,  with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Untitled 2009 by, Kerry James Marshall

Credit: Kerry James Marshall/Jack Shainman Gallery

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at the painting Contemplation, 1937/1938 by Mark Rothko, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about what comes from looking out a window.”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday March 28th at 6pm EDT,  with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Contemplation, 1937/1938 by Mark Rothko 

© 2022 National Gallery of Art 

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we watched the music video King by Florence and the Machine, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “I am no…”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Friday March 25th at 12pm EDT,  with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

King by Florence and the Machine 
 
We argue in the kitchen about whether to have children
About the world ending and the scale of my ambition
And how much is art really worth
The very thing you’re best at
Is the thing that hurts the most
 
But you need your rotten heart
Your dazzling pain like diamond rings
You need to go to war to find material to sing
I am no mother, I am no bride, I am King
 
I need my golden crown of sorrow
My bloody sword to swing
My empty halls to echo with grand self-mythology
I am no mother, I am no bride, I am King
I am no mother, I am no bride, I am King
 
But a woman is a changeling
Always shifting shape
Just when you think you have it figured out
Something new begins to take
What strange claws are these
Scratching at my skin
I never knew my killer would be coming from within
I am no mother, I am no bride, I am King
I am no mother, I am no bride, I am King
 
I need my golden crown of sorrow
My bloody sword to swing
I need my empty halls to echo with grand self-mythology
Cos I am no mother, I am no bride, I am King
I am no mother, I am no bride, I am King
I am no mother, I am no bride, I am King
I am no mother, I am no bride, I am King
 
And I was never as good
as I always thought I was
But I knew how to dress it up
I was never satisfied, it never let me go
Just dragged me by my hair
and back on with the show

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read an excerpt from Species by Tishani Doshi, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about a world difficult to imagine.”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday March 21st at 6pm EDT,  with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Species by Tishani Doshi


When it is time, we will herd into the bunker of the earth
to join the lost animals – pig-footed bandicoot, giant sea
snail, woolly mammoth. No sound of chainsaws, only
the soft swish swish of dead forests, pressing our heads
to the lake’s floor, a blanket of leaves to make fossils
of our femurs and last suppers. In a million years
they will find and restore us to jungles of kapok.
Their children will rally to stare at ancestors.
Neanderthals in caves with paintings of the gnu
period. Papa Homo erectus forever squatting over
the thrill of fire. Their bastard offspring with prairie-size
mandibles, stuttering over the beginnings of speech. And finally,
us – diminutive species of Homo, not so wise, with our weak necks
and robo lovers, our cobalt-speckled lungs. Will it be for them
as it was for us, impossible to imagine oceans where there are now
mountains? Will they recognise their own story in the feather-tailed
dinosaur, stepping out of a wave of extinction to tread over blooms
of algae, never once thinking about asteroids or microbial stew?
If we could communicate, would we admit that intergalactic
colonisation was never a sound plan? We should have learned
from the grass, humble in its abundance, offering food and shelter
wherever it spread. Instead, we stamped our feet like gods,
marvelling at the life we made, imagining all of it to be ours.


Credit: Granta Magazine, Poetry, Granta 151, April 30th 2020

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read an excerpt from Sirens by Billy Collins, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about a sound that prompted you to stop.”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Friday March 18th at 12pm EDT,  with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Sirens by Billy Collins

Not those women who lure sailors
onto a reef with their singing and their tresses,
but the screams of an ambulance
bearing the sick, the injured, and the dying
across the rational grid of the city.

We get so used to the sound
it’s just another sharp in the city’s tune.
Yet it’s one thing to stop on a sidewalk
with other pedestrians to watch one
flashing and speeding down an avenue

while a child on a corner covers her ears
and a shopkeeper appears in a doorway,
but another thing when one gets stuck
in traffic and seems to be crying for its mother
who has fled to another country.

Everyone keeps walking along then,
eyes cast down—for after all,
there’s nothing we can do,
and today we are not the one peering
up at the face of an angel dressed in scrubs.

Some of us are late for appointments
a few blocks away, while others
have the day off and take their time
angling across a broad, leafy avenue
before being engulfed by the green of a park.

“Sirens” by Billy Collins from The Rain in Portugal. © Random House, 2016.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read an excerpt from How to Bloom in Dark Places by Warsan Shire, posted below. 

Our prompt was to begin your writing with “We will…” or “We pledge…”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday March 14th at 6pm EDT,  with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

How to Bloom in Dark Places by Warsan Shire

How many arms do I need to grow to
fight off what scares me?
How many legs to leave?
How many dreams until mother tells
me how to escape this place?
Mother has given me a message.
I must tell the girls, so they can
memorise it too.
If I ever forget, they will remind
Me.

I read to them the words as my mother said them.
We pledge allegiance to our bodies,
We pledge allegiance to fortifying our
girlhood.
We pledge allegiance to water,
to it’s dutiful scarcity,
we do not bow to thirst and the shadow it
casts over our lives.
We will be our own mothers,
We will be the big sisters we never had,
We will be the fathers we almost had
We will fortify our own walls,
We will protect the vulnerable,
We will protect ourselves,
so, we will protect each other.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read an excerpt from City of Incurable Women by Maud Casey, posted below. 

Our prompt was a choice between: “Write about a portrait that you’ve seen.” OR “Write about an escape.”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Friday March 11th at 12pm EST,  with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Casey, Maud. City of Incurable Women. 2022. New York: Bellevue Literary Press.

You emerge reluctantly on the photographic plate.

Your hair parted in the middle; long lumpy braids punctuated by thin-ribboned bows. A third bow perches on top of your head, an afterthought. Your flat mouth. Your crumpled chin. One eyebrow interrupted, as if you shaved a line through it to stop its progress. Earrings dangle from your small ears; once, someone thought it was a good idea to adorn you. In this first photograph, you don’t yet know they have a name for your pain or that the stages of hysteria are called, collectively, the passionate attitudes. With great effort, you summon a body for the photographer.

You weren’t the photogenic one. That was Augustine. Still, there is the fortuitous coincidence of your godliness and your hometown of Loudun, famous for its demonic possessions. In particular, Joan of the Angels, mother superior of the Ursuline Order, to whom Saint Joseph appeared after a final rough exorcism. That you walked the same earth as Joan of the Angels is useful; you hear the promise it holds in the way the doctors discuss the she who is you. Serpentine sentences laced with optimism wound into science. With your birth in Loudun, the doctors make sense of your life; with that detail your life becomes a story with a beginning, a middle, and, somewhere up ahead, an end.

In the photograph, you look sideways out of a face a paler white than your blouse, which looks more like a billowy straitjacket, but that comes later. You may not have been the pretty one, but soon you will be known as the escape artist of the city of incurable women; it was said you could rip a straitjacket to pieces with your teeth.