Writing Into Difficulty: A Workshop

Sometimes, the relationships and stories we most need to write about will resist letting themselves be put into words. We start to write and fail, or we stare at a blank page—not because we have too little to say, but maybe because our hearts are too full and no words seem like they could be enough. Experimenting with formal constraints to our writing can provide a container that holds what needs to be said, so that it can pour itself onto the page. In this workshop, we will explore form in poetry and prose to invite difficult relationships to the page. Beginning from a short discussion of a piece of their own work that helped them to write into family relationships, Chad Frame and Catharina Coenen will guide writers to experiment with form in prose and poetry to create space for needed words.