Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at the 1947 painting “Les Clochards, Montmartre, Paris” by Loïs Mailou Jones, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about going our separate ways.”

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 February 7th at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Les Clochards, Montmartre, Paris by Loïs Mailou Jones

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Breaking [News]” by Noor Hindi, posted below.

Our prompt was: “What buoys me through the world...”

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 January 31st at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Breaking [News] by Noor Hindi

We’ll wake up, Sunday morning, and read the paper. Read each other. Become

consumers

of each other’s stories, a desperate reaching

for another body’s warmth—its words buoying us through a world. We carry

graveyards on our backs and I’m holding a lightning bug

hostage in one hand, its light dimming in the warmth

of  my fist, and in the other, a pen, to document its death. Isn’t that terrible?

I’ll ask you, shutting my fist once more.

In interviews, I frame my subject’s stories through a lens to make them digestible

to consumers.

I  become a machine. A transfer of information. They  become a plea for empathy,

an oversaturation of feelings we’ll fail at transforming into action.

What’s lost is incalculable.

           And at the end of  summer, the swimming pools will be gutted of  water.

          And it’ll be impossible to swim.

Source: Poetry (December 2020)

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Another Antipastoral” by Vievee Francis, posted below.

Our prompt was: Begin with “My curious tale...”

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 January 24th at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Another Antipastoral by Vievee Francis

I want to put down what the mountain has awakened.


My mouthful of grass.
My curious tale. I want to stand still but find myself moved patch by patch.
There's a bleat in my throat. Words fail me here. Can you understand? I sink 
   to
my knees tired or not. I now know the ragweed from the goldenrod, and the
   blinding
beauty of green. Don't you see? I am shedding my skins. I am a paper hive, a 
   wolf spider,
the creeping ivy, the ache of a birch, a heifer, a doe. I have fallen from my 
   dream
of progress: the clear-cut glass, the potted and balconied tree, the lemon-
   waxed
wood over a marbled pillar, into my own nocturne. The lullabies I had 
   forgotten.
How could I know what slept inside? What would rend my fantasies to cud 
   and up
from this belly's wet straw-strewn field—

                                                                                these soundings.

Copyright Credit: Vievee Francis, "Another Antipastoral" from Forest Primeval.  
Source: Forest Primeval (TriQuarterly Books, 2016)

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Some Things I Like” from Listener by Lemn Sissay, posted below.

Our prompt was: “I like...”

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 January 17th at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Some Things I Like from Listener by Lemn Sissay

I like wrecks, I like ex-junkies,
I like flunks and ex-flunkies,
I like the way the career-less career,
I like flat beer,
I like people who tell half stories and forget the rest,
I like people who make doodles in important written tests,
I like being late. I like fate. I like the way teeth grate,
I like laceless shoes cordless blues,
I like the one-bar blues,
I like buttonless coats and leaky boats,
I like rubbish tips and bitten lips,
I like yesterday’s toast,
I like cold tea, I like reality,
I like ashtrays, I write and like crap plays.

I like curtains that don’t quite shut,
I like bread knives that don’t quite cut,
I like rips in blue jeans,
I like people who can’t say what they mean,
I like spiders with no legs, pencils with no lead,
Ants with no heads, worms that are half dead.
I like holes, I like coffee cold. I like creases in neat folds.
I like signs that just don’t know where they’re going,
I like angry poems,
I like the way you can’t pin down the sea.
See.

Credit: from Listener by Lemn Sissay.