Freewrite: Delving into Memory to Explore Transitions in our Lives

Friday Freewrite:
Delving into Memory to Explore Transitions in our Lives

In this freewriting workshop, participants will be given short writing prompts to explore points of time in their lives that bring up memories of transitions, some natural and some forced. We will explore moments in childhood or adolescence when we had experiences that shifted our lives in some way. Such shifts perhaps point us to details we have not noticed before, either in our natural environment, the family, or the developing body and self. Or in our adult years, as women, we go through so many transitions, that we often don’t catch our breath to pause and look back and examine each of them. This workshop offers an opportunity, inspired by sample poems, to write about moments in our lives that we examine, discover details that have lain in the shadows, and find meaning through writing.

Pramila Venkateswaran, poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island (2013-15) and co-director of Matwaala: South Asian Diaspora Poetry Festival, is the author of many poetry volumes, the most recent being We Are Not a Museum (Finishing Line Press, 2022), winner of New York Book Festival award.