And once I got over the irrational anxiety of one of the attendees standing up and yelling “fraud!” over Zoom, the workshop was just that. As much as Yale was (literally) a place to learn, I’d also found opportunities to teach (poetry) as well - which has been both nervewracking and exciting. I focused my workshop prompt on stillness and empty space - thinking about ways to repurpose all the empty time and seeming nothingness into something motivating and generative. The posters for the poetry workshops! With bios and a picture that makes me seem impressive and pensive! And maybe a little brooding too, but in a tasteful, poetic way. Poetry? Being able to talk to and make eye contact with real, human people? Something to give me a sense of purpose amidst a developing habit of binge watching cooking shows on Netflix? I was ready. So, I was very hyped when my friend Kinsale (who’s also in the same poetry group as me on campus!) asked me to co-host a Zoom poetry workshop with her, about any topic! I’m fairly sure my texted response was something along the lines of “yeeeeehaw! yes of course!” The workshop was part of a longer series of poetry workshops she would be teaching with friends from Yale and beyond - essentially they were lowkey, informal hour-ish long sessions of writing to a group prompt together. In all of this space, I was simultaneously busy and looking for things to do to make up for the sense of a rapidly-ending sophomore year. Time seemed to fold into itself unceasingly, as if sneaking up and running past us all at the same time, and I might have lost track of what day it was entirely if it weren’t for my remaining deadlines. My friends came to the slow and somewhat jarring realization that they were no longer first-years, or sophomores, or juniors. My professors and classmates seemed to linger at the end of our final Zoom classes, reluctant to go. Amidst the last days of the semester’s end that blended startlingly fast into summer, I found myself increasingly surrounded by more empty space than I knew what to do with.
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