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Alexa Smith--Language of Economy: Writing Our Financial Lives in Poetry

Registration is rolling until Friday March 24th at 5pm. No application is required. $65 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)

What do you want to say about money in your poetry? What's holding you back? In this three-hour workshop, we'll discuss the strange and sometimes laughable relationship between poetry and profit, the potential hang-ups around writing about income or economics, and what forms we might use to access this charged aspect of our humanity in our creative work. Along with observing how various poets address economic issues and financial status in their writing, we'll also look at "money scripts" and Reddit "money diaries" as jumping-off points for a confessional poetics of personal finance, and play with everyday forms like tax returns, job listings, mile-long CVS receipts and Buy Nothing group posts as generative poetic constraints to grapple with the larger economic systems we're all navigating.

Alexa Smith is a poet and essayist from Washington D.C. She has lived in Philadelphia for the past ten years, where she works for an independent textbook publisher and serves as the Editorial Director of Apiary Magazine, a free annual literary magazine centering Philadelphia-area authors and artists of all genres and backgrounds, in print and online. She received her MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Temple University and teaches workshops in poetry, creative nonfiction, and interdisciplinary practice in art and language. Her work can be found in Entropy, Interim, Memoir Mixtapes, Peach Mag, Philadelphia Stories, and elsewhere, as well as streaming on STELLA Radio and Spotify.

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March 7

Ashia Ajani--Writing Nature Poetry

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March 30

Eloise Lindblom--Writing the Sex Scene