Maya Williams (ey/they/she) is a religious Black multiracial nonbinary suicide survivor and was Portland’s seventh poet laureate (2021-2024). Among eir several award-winning books, eir poetry collection What's So Wrong with a Pity Party Anyway? won a Garden Party Collective chapbook prize in 2024. Ey received the Maine Humanities Council’s Constance Carlson Public Humanities Prize in 2024 for “their powerful creation of safe spaces for discussion and art.”
It is difficult to talk about grief, and it can even be more difficult to write through grief. This workshop will explore Simonides' poetry for epitaphs in Ancient Greece as well as Anis Mojgani's poems of grief, both in response to a person who is no longer living and in response to a person who is still living. Participants will examine how grief is related to mental health, and how poems might be written and revised during hard times. Workshop materials provided at registration. Limited enrollment