As humans, we arrive at any given moment with a wide range of joys and traumas—as writers, this is no different. If we have been called to writing, this is because we know we have something important to say. But when we come from different backgrounds and different life experiences, what responsibility do we have to truth in our writing? What is the responsibility we have to ourselves and to each other? What harm do we create when we write from a place that is inauthentic to who we are—and in the reverse, what power do we embody when we write from our own truth?

In this workshop, award-winning poet and Level II Reiki practitioner, Jo Blair Cipriano, will lead us in an afternoon of reconnecting to our authentic selves. We will study work by Solmaz Sharif, Taneum Bambrick, Nicole Sealey, Layli Long Soldier, and Luther Hughes among others, and will discuss why only they could’ve written the precise poems they did. We will use guided meditations, writing exercises, and open discussion as means to explore what are the poems that only we could write. This workshop will help you explore who you are at your core, and who your writing is addressing. We will discover what the poems are that we need to write to survive—and then we will write them.

Jo Blair Cipriano is the 2023 winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize, and they have received support from Tin House, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and Brooklyn Poets. Jo is an MFA candidate at the University of Arizona, where they are a 2023 Southwest Field Studies in Writing fellow.

They will be a Writer-In-Residence at the historic Ernest and Mary Hemingway House, and this program is their community offering during residency. Registration is requested to join us.