Poetry Workshop: Holding Space for the Holidays

The winter solstice marks the longest night of the year, but also the beginning of the light’s gradual return.

Across cultures and traditions, it has long been a time for reflection, renewal, and hope.

In this generative poetry workshop, we’ll explore how paying attention to both darkness and light can deepen our understanding of the world and sustain us through difficult seasons. Drawing inspiration from poets such as Mary Oliver, W. S. Merwin, and Jane Kenyon, we’ll read poems that embrace winter’s stillness, find beauty in darkness, and welcome the promise of returning light, and then use them as springboards for our own writing. Writers of all experience levels are welcome. Bring a notebook and a pen or a laptop, and leave with the beginnings of five or six new poems.

The winter solstice marks the longest night of the year, but it also signals the beginning of the light's…