Join us at July 2024's Free Verse, a PSNY initiative designed specifically by & for BIPOC creatives, with Ama Codjoe!

In this generative workshop, participants will discuss ekphrastic writing: writing about art. Together we will engage in close reading and close looking. Workshop attendees will leave with the start of poem, and with prompts for further and future writing. No prior writing experience is needed. Please come prepared to write longhand.

About the instructor: Ama Codjoe is the author of Bluest Nude (Milkweed Editions, 2022), winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and finalist for both the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry and the Paterson Poetry Prize, and Blood of the Air (Northwestern University Press, 2020), winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. She has been awarded support from Bogliasco, Cave Canem, Robert Rauschenberg, and Saltonstall foundations as well as from Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Hedgebrook, Yaddo, Hawthornden Literary Retreat, Willipa Bay AiR, MacDowell, and the Amy Clampitt Residency. Her poems have three times appeared in the Best American Poetry series. Among other honors, Codjoe has received fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bronx Council on the Arts, the New York State Council/New York Foundation of the Arts, and the Jerome Foundation. In 2023, Codjoe was appointed as the second Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim Museum. She is the winner of a 2023 Whiting Award.
This workshop is taught by and for Black, Indigenous, and other Persons of Color with an interest in poetry. We invite folks to connect in this safe, generative, BIPOC-centered space: to share work, experiences, and discourse. At the end of every workshop, we welcome the sharing of resources, such as literature, community events, and grants available for application. Respectfully and consensually connecting with other members outside of the space is encouraged. If you are not BIPOC-identifying, we kindly invite you to attend other PSNY events. While topics do not necessarily center around being BIPOC, this community space is designed specifically for the BIPOC experience. Attendees of our Monthly Free Workshops for BIPOC Creatives receive a 50% off discount code for our Weekly Virtual Workshops!