Button University: Chelsea Guavera Workshop

Poems & Chismes We Collect in Conversations is a four-week writing course that focuses on structuring poems as replies to conversations already started by others—asking and answering questions of the people we love, of the life transitions that arrive unannounced, of the artists and the work they’ve left for us to make something with. How do we root ourselves to the people and the places we most urgently need to speak to in our poems, in every room we’re in, even if they’re not directly present? How do we craft our writing and performance to be felt by audiences that can’t know the whole story between us? In this virtual series, we will analyze and discuss a selection of poems, songs, films, and other excerpts of visual and written media to explore different approaches to storytelling, and prompt new pieces of our own that engage with the conversations left open through them. Attendees will critically analyze art as audience members together, shape and specify their own art to add meaningfully to larger discussions as artists, and practice line by line editing to adapt their writing to the needs of the page and the stage. Come por el chisme, stay for the poetry.