Cyberspace and Poetry: Pandemics and Finding Comfort Through Words In Community

On March 3rd, a group of ten poets led by another wonderful poet, translator, and editor, Silvina López Medin, met at The New York Public Library’s Center for Research in the Humanities for what would be the first of four hands-on poetry writing sessions of the generative poetry workshop, “At the Tip of the Pencil the Line.”

The premise was simple: the group would meet four times to read in translation key figures in Latin American twentieth century poetry: Susana Thénon, Amanda Berenguer, Blanca Varela and Rosario Castellanos. Participants would observe the formal elements of each of these poets, write their own poems inspired by prompts given by Silvina, and then comment on each other’s work. The first day, the group saw a display of materials at NYPL’s collections such as Susana Thénon’s bilingual edition of Distancias = Distances and Reina María Rodríguez’s The Winter Garden Photograph. 

As an icebreaker, Silvina read a piece she made by putting together quotes from each of the participants’ applications to the workshop. Doing so, she created an intimate communal place for the rest of the sessions—which ended up migrating to cyberspace due to the pandemic. Here, some of those verses:

a moment of silence
needs a protective case
made of language and images
anonymous villages on the other side of the hills [...]
how is individual narrative translated into a craft? 
desire [...]
to wait for language to bubble [...] 

The project, inspired by another generative writing series organized for seven years at the Mid-Manhattan Branch by Vilma Álvarez, was coordinated by NYPL’s Catherine Blauvelt and Paloma Celis Carbajal. It culminated in a zine publication featuring a selection of ten poems written during the four sessions. For the cover, the editors found it appropriate to include a photograph taken during these weeks of a deserted and bleak 5th Avenue. The poems collectively tell a story through their diversity of voices, a sort of a chorus sometimes singing high notes full of light and others lower, darker ones showing the multiple facets of the pandemic: hope, appreciation for the small things, mourning, nostalgia, and despair.

The title of the workshop is taken from Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector’s piece “That’s Where I’m Going.”[1] In her own words, Silvina built “a shared space that encouraged the reading of poets not often known in the US, exploring their trajectories from the tip of the pencil to the line on the page, to consider what sets writing in motion, how poems move from first to last line, what tools might help keep ones creative processes going.” 

The experience was so intense, and the participants so committed that in each of the three-hour-long sessions we all decided not to have a designated break time. The mosaic of familiar and friendly faces and voices in our screens turned the workshop into a safe haven to comfort our troubled minds and hearts. 

For one participant, “the workshop became a way to steer this time. It not only became important, but possible, to create space for art, beauty, and continued critical thinking and reflection.” For another it was “the best poetry workshop I've participated in by far. The overall experience is profound and long-lasting.” And for another one “poetry is this thing that has held me when I needed the most. Intangible but very needed. This workshop connected me with women that I would have not met otherwise. It created this community around the written word in which I felt welcomed. During uncertain times, the poems of all the participants held me tightly and warmly.”

On June 11th the workshop closed its cycle with a virtual launch of the zine. Silvina, its main editor, pointed out that this publication starts with the words “I’ve been thinking about” and ends in the word “waiting.”: I’ve been thinking about waiting. She then proceeded to acknowledge each participant’s contribution:

“Thank you, Michelle, for your daffodils craning toward comfort
María José, for your cooking and for wanting it to be the same
Chantal, for your star ready to burst
Malén, for a silence that’s like soft leather
Athena, for marking “there’s more”
Cristina, for painting a portal to escape
Jill, for your horses at night
Jamie, for the escape routes in motorcycles
Erika, for your ink that stains and cleans and scars and changes
Maria, for saying you won’t tell us and still telling.”  

As a conclusion of the last workshop session we read Lispector’s piece out loud, which speaks about words transforming individuality into collectivity through understanding and caring:

“At the end of me is I. I, imploring. I, the one who needs, who begs, who cries, who laments. Yet, who sings. Who speaks words [...]What am I saying? I am saying love. And at the end of love are we.” 

A copy of the zine will be added to the holdings of the Library's General Research Division for anyone to read and enjoy. We hope you check it out when our doors open again. If you're interested in the reading lists for our sessions (selected by Silvina López Medin), you can access and download them here.

The New York Public Library offers thousands of programs annually, serving all ages and a variety of interests and needs. Click here to find a class for you. All classes are free unless otherwise noted.

[1] Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories, trans. Katrina Dodson (New York: New Directions, 2015), 485.