“Imagining Jewish History into Poetry” with Yerra Sugarman
March 22, 2026 @ 12:00 pm – 3:00 pm
The German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin, before his death in 1940 when he took his own life to avoid being murdered as a Jew in Europe, wrote: “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” Urging us to recognize the complexity of historical events, Benjamin asks that we avoid simplistic narratives celebrating progress without acknowledging the costs: the suffering and exploitation of others.
Poeticizing history requires careful and complex consideration. The ethics of transforming tragedy into poems presents a complex moral landscape, prompting critical reflection on the artist’s function, the audience’s experience, and the very nature of art itself. Yet poetry can play a meaningful role in offering testimony and portraying history beyond the mere chronicling of a moment in time. It can be a conduit for commemoration; a means of bearing witness; and a way of pushing the borders of how we look at both the distant and recent past. It can also be a way of giving voice to people who can no longer speak for themselves, providing unsaid perspectives of those who have been silenced.
There is, for instance, the tradition of documentary poetry that places lyric meditation alongside historical source material and records. Such work enables poets and readers to engage in intimate explorations of events and lives from the past while grappling with ethical questions concerning issues of poetic representation.
How can poetry present Jewish history, promoting Judaism and Jewish values, whether rooted in records of the collective past or in an individual’s story? Is it valid, in such dark times such as ours, to use poems as a means of working toward tikkun olam, the repairing of the world, although the poet W. H. Auden has written that “Poetry makes nothing happen?”
In this generative workshop, I will refer to the approaches I took in writing my book of poems, Aunt Bird, in which I try to imagine the life and death during the Holocaust of one of my aunts. As a group, we will also read poems by Emma Lazarus, Paul Celan, Dan Pagis, Miklós Radnóti, Muriel Rukeyser, Adrienne Rich, Anthony Hecht and Ilya Kaminsky, among others.
Through reading, discussion, and writing, we will consider different ways of approaching Jewish history as it occurred, and as it is being made.
Workshop Dates & Cost
March 22, 2025, 12:00-3:00 PM
$108—standard registration
$87—18% discounted registration for Yetzirah Members (you can become a member here)
*As we want our offerings to be accessible to all, there is a pay-what-you-can option if this pricing is a hardship.
About Yerra
Yerra Sugarman’s three volumes of poetry are: Aunt Bird (Four Way Books, 2022), which won American Book Fest’s 2022 Best Book Award for General Poetry, and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in Poetry; The Bag of Broken Glass (Sheep Meadow, 2008), poems from which received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship; and Forms of Gone (Sheep Meadow, 2002), winner of PEN American Center’s Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature, and is the daughter of Holocaust survivors. She serves on the Board of Yetzirah, and co-curates its reading series
