NOW VIRTUAL - Ohio Poetry Association Meeting and Workshop featuring Yalie Saweda Kamara

This is the link for virtual registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/poetry-workshop-with-cincinnati-poet-yalie-saweda-kamara-virtual-option-tickets-1051619822197?aff=oddtdtcreator

For our first poetry workshop of 2025, we are thrilled to welcome the current Poet Laureate of the City of Cincinnati, Yalie Saweda Kamara. Kamara, is a Sierra Leonean-American writer, educator, and researcher originally from Oakland, California, and the 2022–2024 Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate. Invited for a third year of poet laureate service, her tenure will conclude in 2025. She is an assistant professor of English at Xavier University, where she specializes in creative writing and global and diasporic literature. Winner of the 2022–2023 Jake Adam York Prize, Kamara’s debut full-length poetry collection is Besaydoo (Milkweed Editions, 2024).

About the Workshop: “i am running into a new year”
In this workshop, whose title is based on the famed Lucille Clifton poem, poets will reflect on the gifts, struggles, and revelation of 2024 and engage in creative activity that considers world making in 2025. Through a multimedia exploration of surrender, embrace, confession, and celebration, we will endeavor to investigate the following query: How do the vestiges and blossoms from the previous year inform our understanding of and proximity
to "possibility" in the newest year?

This hybrid workshop will take place following the OPA quarterly business meeting at the Mercantile Library in Cincinnati and also via Zoom.

Agenda
10:00 AM–12:00 PM, OPA Business Meeting
12:00–1:00 PM, Lunch Break
1:00–4:00 PM, Poetry Workshop with Yalie Saweda Kamara