Poetry Workshop with Gabrielle Calvocoressi

The Beautiful Terrible: How to Get All of It Into the Poem 

Why is it so hard to get the deep sorrow and the deep joy of life into the same poem without it feeling like a disjointed mess? How come I can’t seem to explain that I had the best pizza of my life and still my heart was broken over the loss of my mother? Why is that so hard to do in a poem is a question I often ask myself. In this class we will not prioritize joy or sorrow. We’ll look at poems and listen to music that braids them together like (and often through) breath. We’ll read listen talk and write a ton. We’ll be humans, which is to say we’ll be a whole world of things and we’ll try and talk about it. Very excited to make a world with you!

Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart, Apocalyptic Swing (a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize), and Rocket Fantastic, winner of the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. Calvocoressi’s poems have been published or are forthcoming in numerous magazines and journals including The Baffler, The New York Times, POETRY, Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Tin House, and The New Yorker. Calvocoressi is an Editor at Large at Los Angeles Review of Books, and Poetry Editor at Southern Cultures. Works in progress include a non-fiction book entitled, The Year I Didn’t Kill Myself and a novel, The Alderman of the Graveyard. Calvocoressi teaches at UNC Chapel Hill and lives in Carrboro, NC, where joy, compassion, and social justice are at the center of their personal and poetic practice. {Photo © Levi Strand}