Inkwell June Workshop with Hannah Dierdorff

What is the role of poetry in an environmental crisis? Can a poetics of ecstasy, through decentering the self, move us toward the care and action our current moment requires?

In this educational and generative session, we’ll look at several poems that reimagine the space between ecstasy, environmentalism, and ethics and discuss the limits and possibilities of language within each. Poets studied may include Mary Oliver, Jake Skeets, Brenda Hillman, CA Conrad, MaKshya Tolbert, and Daniela Naomi Molnar.

After studying how ecopoets resist the logic of violence, you’ll respond with your own writing. Together, we’ll explore how responsibility to each other can be a kind of ecstasy that removes us from our illusions of control and moral purity, creating space for desire and grief to exist alongside.

All levels welcome.