Ellen Bass

What’s going to be offered in the 5th series [Living Room Craft Talk] ?

We’re going to look at the epistolary poem, which is a letter poem. And that’s a fascinating form that allows us–even leads us–to say things that we may not otherwise find a way to put in a poem. We’re going to look at the elegy, which has changed so much over the years. We’re going to look at a very inspiring subject that I know a lot about from my years working with survivors, transforming trauma into art. We’re going to study it from the point of view of craft–what are strategies that you can use to work with traumatic experience–personal and public–and make poems from it.

Read the full interview with Ellen Bass in The Blue Mountain Review, September 2022