Our poetry workshop has been meeting for three years and we've developed this beautiful trust around sharing vulnerable work, but lately there's this unspoken tension about who gets to claim certain experiences in their poems and whether some of our voices are drowning out others. We all love the intimacy we've built but I think we're avoiding a conversation about power and representation that's making some people's poetry smaller and others' feel suddenly self-conscious.
More people experience this than they realize.
A long-standing poetry circle faces the delicate work of examining how privilege and perspective shape whose voices are heard and celebrated within their creative community.
“Where Are You with Poetry — the oldest creative form?”
If this sounds familiar, the Library can help you find the bigger picture.