As a teaching artist, I have taught bilingual workshops of poetry to seniors in the Washington Heights community, in Manhattan. This program has been possible thanks to an artistic residency awarded to me by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2019 and 2020). I was also awarded a Creative Learning Grant that has allowed me to make my program sustainable in the community.
In the first two editions, my poetry workshop has been part of SU CASA. This program is administered by LMCC and supported by public funds from the New York City Council in partnership with the Department of Cultural Affairs and the Department for the Aging.
I worked for six months with a group of senior ladies at Star Senior Center, where we weekly met to create texts and think about poetics in sessions conducted in English and Spanish. We had visiting poets, and a public event where they read their new poems in front of their families and friends.
I am currently working on the expansion and sustainability of this program to teach to a broader community of senior artists, who will find meaning and purpose in their life through poetry in their mother and adoptive tongues.
As of March of 2020, due to COVID-19, we continue our conversation around poetry via phone calls. When the Creative Learning Grant started, the workshop starting to meet via Zoom and in partnership with Star Senior Center. In April 2021, we came back to in person teaching taking all the necessary COVID-19 precautions.
This is an ongoing program. If you would like to join us, feel free to send me an email.
