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World on Fire: Writing About Crisis and Hope in the Natural World with Sasha West
August 10 @ 10:00 am - 2:30 pm CDT
$130Saturday, August 10, 10am-2:30pm CST (includes a 30-minute lunch), in person at Gemini Ink
Instructor: Sasha West
Nonmember: $130; Member: $110; Student/Educator/Mil $75
Class Postponed
Burning forests. Drought. Melting ice caps. Islands of plastic waste. With mounting natural disasters, our anxiety about the environment is increasing. So how do we process these feelings and use writing to spark conversation about this very pressing topic?
In this one-day generative workshop, we will use poetry as a self-reflective tool to explore the multitude of feelings we have about the current state of nature. We can identify and voice how the climate crisis affects us while also exploring the idea that something better is possible.
In this eco-poetry workshop, we will practice paying attention, seeing connections, and embracing contradictions in nature. We will study poets writing about the environment in celebration, mourning, and resistance. These explorations will be used to fuel our imagination. Poems will be written in class and generative exercises will be provided so you can continue to reflect and write about your relationship to nature.
Open to writers of all skill levels.
By the end of the class students will have:
- The first draft of a poem
- Generative exercise to fuel your writing after class
- Resources for sharing eco-poetry
Sasha West is the author of Failure and I Bury the Body, which was awarded the National Poetry Series, a Texas Institute of Letters First Book of Poetry Award, and a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Fellowship. Her second book, How to Abandon Ship, was published in 2024 by Four Way Books. Her multimedia eco-arts exhibits with visual artist Hollis Hammonds have been exhibited at the Columbus College of Art and Design, Texas A&M, ArtPrize 2023 Michigan, and elsewhere. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at St. Edward’s University, where she founded and runs the Environmental Humanities program.