Fall 2023

“Telling the Soul’s Stories: Spiritual Anecdote and Autobiography”
with Joy Ladin

Spiritual experience often feels private, isolating, uncommunicable. Spiritual autobiographies, from anecdotes to full-blown memoirs, use storytelling techniques to break down this sense of isolation, offering others glimpses of our own struggles and exaltations, and, more importantly, because readers interpret narratives by identifying with characters and projecting our own lives onto events in stories, turning our private experiences into stories through which others can recognize, reflect on, and be inspired in their own spiritual journeys. In this generative writing workshop we will look at examples of spiritual anecdote and autobiography, discuss the communicability and incommunicability of spiritual experience, and practice using midrash, haiku, and self-inventory to develop our own spiritual narratives. 

Wednesdays (1-2 pm ET) October 11, 18, 25

$108—standard registration

$88—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

Joy Ladin has published ten books of poetry, including National Jewish Book Award winner The Book of Anna, Lambda Literary Award finalists Transmigration and Impersonation, and newly published Shekhinah Speaks (Selva Oscura). She is also the author of a memoir, National Jewish Book Award finalist Through the Door of Life; and Lambda Literary and Triangle Award finalist The Soul of the Stranger. Visit Joy’s profile in Yetzirah’s Jewish Poets Database.

“Writing God” with Joy Ladin

When we think about God and divine-human relationships, we often feel powerless. But human beings have virtually unlimited power in terms of how we use language to name, invoke, and imagine the divine. We will examine a wide range of examples of this power in biblical and other traditional religious texts, and in modern and contemporary poems, and practice techniques we find there to learn to create language to reflect and extend our own sense of the divine.

Wednesdays (1-2 pm ET) December 6, 13, 20

$108—standard registration

$88—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

Spring 2024

“Poetic Lineages” with Ilya Kaminsky

We will read poems from Jewish poets of Eastern Europe and elsewhere and we will marvel together on the idea of poetic lineages: how do poets learn from other poets across time and geography? Is there such a thing as a poetics of diaspora? poetics of exile? How do poets enter in conversation with poets that came before them? How do poets bring back to life the authors who came before them and were (unjustly) forgotten? How can our own words grow and change as we overhear conversations between other poets, on and off the page? I hope that in our time together we will all ask impossible questions—and then try to answer them with unpredictable new lyrics.

This workshop will be a modified version of the one Ilya taught at our 2023 Jewish Poetry Conference, to give you a taste of Yetzirah’s conference offerings.

Sunday (1 pm ET for 1.5+ hours) March 31

$36—standard registration

$30—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

Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former USSR and came to USA in 1993 when his family was granted asylum by the American government. He is the author of Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo) and Deaf Republic (Graywolf) as well as co-editor of Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins), Homage to Paul Celan (Marick) and many other books. He has also translated books by Marina Tsvetaeva, Polina Barskova, Boris and Ludmila Khersonsky, among others. His work has received The Los Angeles Times Book Prize, The Guggenheim Fellowship, and was shortlisted for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award.  Visit Ilya’s profile in Yetzirah’s Jewish Poets Database.