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Start date June 6 2020
10:00 am EDT to 1:00 pm EDT

The Body as Language: Somatic Poetics with Tessa Micaela

Zoom

Attendance limit: 30

Register by June 4

Where and how does language move through, from and towards the body? How do written texts impact and inform embodied responses? Beginning with the premise that all experiences traverse one or more bodies; singular, collective, familial, socio-political, historical, fragmented, (dis)inhabited, etc. And moving towards the body as a place of knowledge, resonance and arrival, this one day workshop is designed to move participants through somatic processes of writing, reading, and editing. 

This workshop will use somatic centering and listening practices, writing prompts, structures for somatic reading and editing, facilitated workshopping and conversation. We will move toward these questions: where does language live in the body? How do poems arrive and impact the body of their readers? What are the limits and extensions of those poetics and those bodies? 

Writing and inspiration for this class will come from Maggie Nelson, Claudia Rankine, Hanif Abdurraqid, CA Conrad, Dawn Lundy Martin, and Jordan Scott, among others. Together, we will investigate the impact of language on and between bodies; we will enter the process of writing through the body, using sensory exercises, body-based listening and editing processes to return to impulse.

Please bring 2-3 poems you are working on, and your curiosities about somatics as a process of production and poetics. 

If you need financial aid in order to attend, please download and e-mail a copy of the Financial Aid form to [email protected].

Tessa Micaela (teh-sah mee-kai-eh-la) is a poet and writer from Philadelphia, PA. Tessa is the author of Where Bells Begin (Rescue Press), there are boxes and there is wanting (Trembling Pillow Press), which was selected by Laura Mullen for the 2015 Bob Kaufman Prize, and the chapbook Crude Matter (ypolita press, 2016). Tessa’s writing has appeared in make/shift magazine, jubilat, Dusie, ELDERLY, and more. Tessa holds an MFA from Mills College, where Tessa attended as the first recipient of the Community Poetics Project Fellowship.

Tessa has taught somatic practice and writing workshops at universities, community organizations, youth programs and city jails. Tessa collaborates widely with other writers, organizers, community healers, magic makers and artists. Tessa currently lives and writes in central Vermont.

Available Tickets

$65 $65.00

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