24PearlStreet Workshops
Infrastructures hold tradition in place. Tradition creates social norms that last centuries. Infrastructure, both tangible and unseen, establish a system by which the norms never alter. This is true in history, social hierarchy, and literature. Classical form, in poetry, can operate as an oppressive infrastructure dictating how and what we write. This course will focus on using form poetry to debunk larger societal hierarchies. Inspired by Jericho Brown’s poetry collection, The Tradition, participants will engage classical form and create a ‘new’ form of poetry as they envision a future they’ve named. This course will be both generative and workshop-based.
LIVE TIME: 12pm-2pm EST.
Biography
Porsha Olayiwola is a native of Chicago who writes, lives, and loves in Boston. Olayiwola is a writer, performer, educator, and curator. She is an Individual World Poetry Slam Champion and the founder of the Roxbury Poetry Festival. Olayiwola is Brown University's 2019 Heimark Artist in Residence as well as the 2021 Artist in Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. She is a 2020 Poet Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets. Olayiwola earned her MFA in poetry from Emerson College and is the author of i shimmer sometimes, too. Olayiwola is the current Poet Laureate for the city of Boston and the Jacob Ziskind Poet in Residence at Brandeis University. Her work can be found in or is forthcoming from TriQuarterly Magazine, Black Warrior Review, The Boston Globe, Essence Magazine, Redivider, The Academy of American Poets, Netflix, Wildness Press, The Museum of Fine Arts, and elsewhere.
