As a teaching artist, I have taught multilingual poetry workshops in Manhattan’s Washington Heights and Harlem communities. This program has been possible thanks to artistic residencies awarded to me by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2019-2023). I was also awarded a Creative Learning Grant to make my program sustainable in the community.
My poetry workshop has been part of SU-CASA for the first two editions. 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 with a group of poets at three different senior centers. We met weekly to create texts and discuss poetics in sessions conducted in English and Spanish. We had visiting poets and a public event where they read their new poems before their families and friends.
As of March 2020, due to COVID-19, I conducted our poetry sessions via phone calls. The workshop migrated to Zoom with Star Senior Center when the Creative Learning Grant started. In April 2021, we returned to in-person teaching, taking all the necessary COVID-19 precautions.
I am working on expanding and sustaining this program to teach poetry to a broader community of poets who will find meaning and purpose through poetry in their mother and adoptive tongues.
This is an ongoing program, and I plan to conduct intergenerational writing workshops in the future. If you would like to join or support us, feel free to email me.
