Upcoming Kundiman Events:
An Aftermath of Your Choosing
with Arhm Choi Wild
October 7th–December 2nd
Thursdays, 6:30 PM–9:00 PM ET
“I think I’ve always been amazed by how poetry can point to both tenderness as well as violence. And that poems can really hold a complexity of what it’s like to be loved or to love people without diminishing either the beauty or the struggle of it. It’s definitely been a long journey to give myself permission to write about the violences my family has experienced. And because poetry can be both a vehicle to praise and also hold accountable….”
–– Arhm Choi Wild, Foglifter: “The Ghosts These Moments Have Made: In Conversation with Arhm Choi Wild”
To be on the margins of gender, race, and/or sexuality can often feel like there is no roadmap to follow. When we are forced to find our own way, what do we do with the expectations we’ve inherited to conform, silence, and erase? How could naming these inheritances allow for choice instead of repetition, agency instead of compromised belonging?
We will look to LGBTQ+ Asian American poets who have mapped their own way forward and created a sense of belonging wide enough to hold all of who we are. We will look deeply into our family history through the gathering of stories and research to name both our genetic and metaphorical DNA. We will write our way towards an interruption of the erasure that is its own kind of violence, and in its wake make space for us to dream boldly and expansively as if there is no margin to hold us.
In this 8-week course, we will look at poems that both name our inheritances and articulate a different way forward of one’s choosing. Each workshop will start with a free write followed by a close look at the poems of LGBTQ+ Asian American writers who have crafted a path towards healing and a reimagining of what it means to belong, both to oneself and to our concepts of family and home. This deep dive into the craft and the roadmap these poems create will lead into a structured brainstorming session. These detailed brainstorming lists make this workshop accessible to writers of all levels. Participants will then head into a 30-minute writing session equipped with their brainstorming lists. We will close out the workshop by sharing our rough drafts, whether that is one line of the poem or its entirety.
This class will not meet on Thursday, November 25th.
Reading List:
If They Come for Us by Fatimah Asghar
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen
Soft Science by Franny Choi
Invasive Species by Marwa Helal
Why I Reach for You When I Know I Can’t Touch You and other poems by Paul Tran
Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
eligibility:
This workshop is open to all writers of color, and students must be able to attend all 8 sessions of the workshop. The non-refundable tuition fee is $495. This workshop will be limited to 12 participants and will be held over Zoom. There is one scholarship spot available, and the application is open through Thursday, September 16th.
Registration for this class is now closed.
FACULTY:
Arhm Choi Wild is a queer, Korean American poet who grew up in the slam community of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and went on to perform across the country, including at Brave New Voices, the New York City Poetry Festival, and Asheville Wordfest. Their debut book of poems, CUT TO BLOOM, was the winner of the 2019 Write Bloody Book Contest. Arhm is a Kundiman Fellow with an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, and was a finalist for the Jake Adam York Prize in 2019. They have been anthologized in Daring to Repair by Wising Up Press and The Queer Movement Anthology of Literatures, and their work appears in Barrow Street, The Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, Split this Rock, and other publications. They work as the Director of the Progressive Teaching Institute and as a Diversity Coordinator at a school in New York City. For more information, visit arhmchoiwild.com.