Grief(s) - collective, private & ecological mourning (earlier session)

FOLLOWING THE SUCCESS OF THIS STUDY IN 2023, WE ARE OFFERING IT AGAIN FOR 2024 AND HAVE ADDED THIS SECOND (EARLIER) SESSION TO MEET DEMAND

i held an atlas in my lap

ran my fingers across the whole world

and whispered

where does it hurt?

it answered

everywhere

everywhere

everywhere.

Warsan Shire, What They Did Yesterday Afternoon

To live is to love, in all its many forms. Myriad entities become the subjects of our love: human and non-human animals, the land and water and sky. Because we love, we must suffer its corollary—loss. But how do we process the many losses we face, personal and collective, over a lifetime? Experts say that in the West our mourning rituals have diminished, even while we are confronted with increasing reasons to feel grief. Today, the world feels deeply damaged. Everywhere, it and we are hurting. In the last two decades alone, we have been confronted with raging wildfires. Increasing hate crimes. The depletion of non-renewable resources. A global pandemic. In these unsettling times, every flash of breaking news is enough to crack the human heart. And while we bear these, we continue to sustain personal devastation.

Can poetry help us process our grief? Can it be part of a grieving practice to help us make sense of our feelings? Can it invite us into a community of mourners who find strength in each other’s stories? Can it teach us about other cultures’ forms of mourning? In this workshop, we will examine three poems exploring different kinds of grief: collective, private and ecological. Join Julie Sutherland in a study of poems by Heid E. Erdrich (Public Grief), Jackie Kay (Darling), and Pamela Mordecai (My Sister Cries the Sea). We will close the session with a reading of Mary Oliver’s In Blackwater Woods.

Please note: This workshop is rooted in the belief that poetry has the power to heal emotional wounds, shift public attitudes towards divisive topics and improve social connectedness during times of global distress. To allow participants extra time to experience the poetry contemplatively as well as intellectually, the single session runs for 2.5 hours.

STUDY DETAILS:

• Single session study on Zoom led by Julie Sutherland
• Links to the poems included in the study: Public Grief by Heid E. Erdrich; Jackie Kay’s Darling (download); My sister cries the sea by Pamela Mordecai; In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver.
• Sunday 15 September 2024, 1.30-4.00 pm (UK)
• £45 including introductory notes