Hauling An Ocean In: Voicing Grief

Sunday, June 9, 2024 from 1 to 3 p.m. (EST). In grief, we must speak with new mouths. In grief, we must find language for pain that lives in a dark, powerful land that leaves us feeling lost, feeling unable, feeling a need to form words where there is only the scream of loss. So how? How to say what grief is like when grief is so resistant to description? How to say in words what is so painfully felt? This generative course will consider several texts that grapple with these questions, texts that seek to put language to the experience of grief—which is unique to each person but universal to the human experience. By examining the different forms and voices in these texts we will consider how each person’s experience of grief informs the shape of their words, and of their story on the page. We will also discuss and name practices of care essential to the process of grief-and-loss writing. Texts may include excerpts of work by Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Han Kang, Michael Ondaatje, Denise Riley, and Ocean Vuong. Guided by what we read, we will move through generative writing prompts for grief and loss: exercises in poetry or prose that are portals into the deep, lines to hold onto.

“There is something down there and you want it told.” - Gwendolyn MacEwen