Roundtable

Like music, loss is a common language we all learn. The ways poets explore grief are as disparate as the ways it manifests in our lives. From Victoria Chang to Nick Cave, writers in every genre wade into the messiness of this work every day, creating unique processes that inform unique poems, stories, and songs. Participants will discuss the challenges of writing about grief, specific processes to overcome those challenges, and share brief examples of the work made possible along the way.

Since its English publication, Danish experimentalist Inger Christensen’s alphabet (trans. Susanna Nied) has been a touchstone for environmentally minded poets in the U.S. A book of intersecting forms, alphabet is an abecedarian poetry series that uses the Fibonacci sequence—one of the so-called languages of nature—to determine line count from section to section, which lends itself to a spiralling and expansive poetics.