PSNY Virtual Workshop: Creating Emotional Depth in Poetry

With poet Aishvarya Arora!

In poetry, like in cooking, a depth of flavor and feeling comes from the careful orchestration of supposed opposites. How salt makes honey sweeter, or an acid cuts fat—our grief, rage, and despair render our humor, joy, and desire more luminescent. In this generative workshop, you’ll encounter poetry by experts of the emotional register shift, including Natalie Shapero, Ross Gay, Diane Seuss, Ben Garcia, and others. We’ll listen closely to their wide-ranging voices and experiment with using language and form to access a greater depth of feeling in our own poems. All levels of poetry experience are welcome.

About the Instructor: Aishvarya is a poet and double taurus from Queens. Their work has received support from the Fulbright program, Tupelo Press's Merrill Family Fellowship, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, where they were a Poetry Coalition Fellow. Aishvarya's poetic obsessions include masculinity, t4t touch, Leslie Feinberg, and birds. Their work is featured in, or forthcoming from, Poetry Northwest, The Margins, The Hopkins Review, Apogee, and others. Currently, they teach poetry to first year students at Cornell University. Find them on instagram @cool_slug_.

* *This workshop will take place on Zoom.**

Host or Publisher The Poetry Society of New York