Northeastern University presents “Writing as Healing: Of Being Numerous”, an online writing course with Emmalea Russo, author of Wave Archive.

“Writing as Healing: Of Being Numerous” with Emmalea Russo: May 18 – 22, 2020

In his epic objectivist poem, “Of Being Numerous,” George Oppen writes, “There are things / We live among ‘and to see them / Is to know ourselves’.” According to Oppen’s contemporary, Louis Zukofsky, objectivist poetics strives to treat the poem as an object while emphasizing sincerity, intelligence, and the poet’s ability to look clearly at the world. In this workshop, we will enter the space of Oppen’s poem and get to know it through a series of writing prompts meant to help us look deeper into our interior and exterior worlds. What does it mean to be numerous? How do we truly see that which we live amongst? We will forge a relationship with Oppen’s poem via daily generative and cumulative writing prompts. In our class meeting at week’s end, we’ll discuss Oppen’s poem and our own experiences spending time with this text while regarding sincerely our own interior and exterior environments.

Emmalea Russo’s books are G (Futurepoem) and Wave Archive (Book*hug). She was a writer in residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the 18th Street Arts Center, and a visiting writer at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and Parsons School of Design. Recent writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Artcritical, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, BUST, Cosmopolitan, Hyperallergic, Los Angeles Review of Books, and SF MOMA’s Open Space.

Register for this workshop here.

The Writing Program and Writing Center are thrilled to sponsor ‘Writing As Healing During COVID-19’, three weeks of online writing workshops for NU faculty, staff, students, and the community at large. How can we begin to process and account for our experience during this time of unrest, loss, and suspension? We believe that writing can be a powerful tool for reflecting and healing. We hope that these workshops will begin to provide a space for healing to happen.

Workshops are free, open to the public, and welcome writers of all levels and disciplines. Each workshop is a week long (Monday-Friday). During this time, participants will receive daily writing prompts and readings, which will culminate in an online session together at the end of the week. Those interested will receive feedback on a single piece of writing that they have produced during the week.