A Lover's Discourse: Eros and Otherwise

A Lover’s Discourse: Eros & Otherwise

“Myself in days gone by: again I give

Myself unto the past: - again I live.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke, I Love My Life’s Dark Hours

This generative workshop will ask what does it mean to write through and about love? (Familial, ancestral, devotional, romantic, platonic, and political.) How can we unmask the depths and nuances of such a polymorphous emotion? How can form, or lack thereof, help us perform the kinds of love/heartbreak we cannot otherwise name? This class will offer cross-genre readings and prompts from fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. With the readings as foundation, we will write works of unexacting devotion, exploring different iterations of love to inspire us further on our literary paths. This class is open to writers of all levels!

Maha Ahmed is a writer, translator, and a Creative Writing PhD candidate at the University of Houston. She is the recipient of the 2023 Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry. Her work has appeared in Grist, The Adroit Journal, The Recluse, and elsewhere. Her critical and creative work explores the Arab-American diaspora and the avant-garde. She edits poetry for Rusted Radishes.

Host or Publisher Poison Pen Reading Series