Telling Stories of Liberation and Transformation
Reading, Discussion & Poetry Writing Workshop

Facilitator:  Pramila Venkateswaran

WWBA 2011 Long Island Poet of the Year

Series meets on three Saturdays: 2 workshop sessions plus a poetry reading.
Fee:  $15 per session / $25 for both workshop sessions (fee includes Saturday, Sept. 22nd poetry reading)

This event was funded in part by Poets & Writers, Inc. with public funds from New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Saturday, September 8th
1-3pm
In stories of immigration, loss, marriage, birth, love, friendship, work, or travel lie the daily minutiae of experience that govern our lives. Poetry offers us the space to express the nature of the transformation that we have undergone. Participants will explore questions such as: What are the small things that move us out of ourselves? How does joy happen in the middle of mind-numbing routine? When did we discover recitation was prayer? Participants will be given ideas to generate poems that tell stories from their own or other people's lives about how they have been transformed by an experience or liberated by large or tiny movements in their lives.

Saturday, September 15th
1-3pm
When were you reminded that gender matters and when did gender become insignificant? When did you feel (un)inhibited by your gender? How does the Divine Feminine enter our work whether you are a man or a woman?  Reading some of the great poems of the world by Kabir, Meera, Rumi, Akka Mahadevi, Whitman, and contemporary poets, participants will be inspired to write about their gendered experience or spiritual immanence, express what that transformative moment felt like, whether it was in a crowded café, a mall, or in the kitchen.

Saturday, September 22nd
4pm
Poetry Reading to be held in the Interpretive Center of Walt Whitman Birthplace.

Please call 631-427-5240 (ext. 112) to register.

Space is limited

About Pramila Venkateswaran, WWBA Long Island 2011 Poet of the Year

Ms. Venkateswaran is the author of Thirtha (Yuganta Press, 2002), Behind Dark Waters (Plain View Press, 2008), Draw Me Inmost (Stockport Flats, 2009), and Trace (Finishing Line Press,2011), has a doctorate from George Washington University and teaches English and Women’s Studies at Nassau Community College, New York. A finalist for the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award in 1999 and a recipient of a Hedgebrook residency in 2002 and a Norcroft residency in August 2003, she has published in Paterson Literary Review, Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, Atlanta Review, Prairie Schooner, Xanadu, Long Island Quarterly, Calyx: Journal of Art and Literature by Women, California Quarterly, Kavya Bharati, and Nassau Review, among several other print and electronic journals. Recent anthologies, A Chorus for Peace, En(Compass) and Writing the Lines of Our Hands, include her voice among poets from around the world. She reads her poems internationally, most recenly at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. Her essays on literature, gender, and politics, appear in Women's Studies Quarterly, Socialism and Democracy, and Journal of Postcolonial Writing, among many others.