Upcoming Kundiman Events:
“On Alchemy: How Poems Rewrite Our Origins” with Ina Cariño
October 16th, 2022
Sunday, 2:00 PM–5:00 PM ET
"Where are you really from?”—a question too often asked of POC whose lived experiences are themselves transgressions on identity. However, consider an alternate origin. Where did you come from, and who were you before you were named? Who would we be if we let our poems rewrite our roots in trauma?
Origin stories are integral to the identities of those who live in diaspora. If “stanza” in Italian means “little room,” a stanza might be likened to “room in a house, a lyric dwelling place” (“Stanza,” Academy of American Poets). In this hybrid poetry workshop, participants will examine the doorways they crossed to get where they are today.
Through prompts and after discussing origin stories both personal and cultural—folk stories, myths, superstitions, and more—participants will generate new materials, then utilize various visual forms on the page—pour their poems into different containers—in an attempt to scrutinize their bodies' beginnings anew through a decolonized eye. In this reverse alchemy of sorts, these works will be shared in the workshop if participants so choose. They will also be given several prompts to take home. What has walked with you, and what have you left behind? What parts of you have changed in this crossing?
eligibility:
This craft class is open to all writers of color. The non-refundable tuition fee is $50. This craft class will be held over Zoom. There are scholarship spots available. The scholarship deadline is Friday, September 23rd.
REGISTRATION FOR THIS CLASS IS NOW CLOSED.
FACULTY:
Ina Cariño is a 2022 Whiting Award winner who holds an MFA in creative writing from North Carolina State University. Their poetry appears or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, The Margins, The New Republic, Guernica, Poetry Northwest, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review Daily, Waxwing, New England Review, and elsewhere. Ina is a Kundiman fellow and a recipient of a fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. She is the winner of the 2021 Alice James Award for Feast, forthcoming from Alice James Books in March 2023. In 2021, Ina was selected as one of four winners of the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest.