Creative Containers: Writing With Poetic Forms
2026-04-16 12:30 - 13:30 (America/New_York) | Zoom
April 16, 23 & 30 and May 7, 2026
12-1:30 p.m. ET
$180

Creative containers — ranging from sonnets and sonnenizios, to pantoums and triolets — can offer structure while also inviting depth, complexity, and even surprise into your writing! In this series, poet and author Susan Comninos will guide participants through the rich possibilities of using poetic forms as tools for cohesion and focus, as well as exploration, expression, and musicality. Taking as our springboards poems by Jewish voices or on Jewish themes (including work by Rochelle Nameroff, Jaqueline Osherow, Emma Lazarus and Robert Morgan), we’ll play with prompts and shared writing time to help you develop your own poetic voice within the shape of a received form.
In each session we’ll:

Learn techniques of specific forms and how they shape content and create tone;
Read and discuss examples that illuminate craft and purpose;
Practice generative prompts tailored to the form of the day; and
Share work in a supportive environment with thoughtful feedback.

This workshop is open to writers of all levels — from beginners curious about form to experienced writers looking to stretch their practice!
This session will be recorded and sent to participants. We encourage live attendance for you to get the most out of the experience.
Susan Comninos is the author of a recent book of poems, “Out of Nowhere” (SFA Press/Texas A&M, 2022). Her individual poems have appeared in the Harvard Review Online, Rattle, The Common, Prairie Schooner and North American Review, among others. She’s taught writing to undergraduates at Siena College, The College of St. Rose, and SUNY Albany, as well as adults in the community. At present, she serves as poetry editor of Judith magazine and is at work on a second collection of poems, “Wild Joy of Receiving.” The title poem, published by The Baltimore Review, is forthcoming this spring in the anthology “The Color Wheel” (Terrapin Books, 2026).

Shekhinah: A Creative Tradition
2026-05-06 12:00 - 13:30
Wednesdays, May 6, 13, 20 & 27, 2026
12-1:30 p.m. EST
$180

One of poetry’s oldest and most powerful purposes is to make divine presence perceptible through language. In this series led by poet Joy Ladin, we will explore the rich intersections between poetry, Jewish tradition, and the Shekhinah: Judaism’s name for a form of God’s presence that dwells within human life—within time, space, relationship, community, and even suffering.

Unlike other understandings of divine presence that arise through prophecy or revelation, the Shekhinah emerged through the imaginative and spiritual work of the rabbis. The word comes from a biblical root meaning “to dwell,” yet the Shekhinah does not appear in the Torah. Instead, it was developed in response to human longing and need—a way of naming the sacred as something close, intimate, and accompanying.

Together, we will read early rabbinic texts alongside later interpretations, including medieval mystical writings and contemporary feminist Jewish poetry that reimagines the Shekhinah as a more explicitly female-identified presence.

Through discussion and gentle writing exercises, participants will experiment with language as a way to search for, question, imagine, and respond to the Shekhinah—or however we understand presence beyond the human. This series offers space for reflection, creativity, and spiritual exploration through the art of poetry.

All sessions will be recorded and sent to participants. We encourage live attendance for you to get the most out of the experience.

Joy Ladin has published ten books of poetry, including her new collection, Shekhinah Speaks (Selva Oscura Press); The Book of Anna, winner of the National Jewish Book Award; and Transmigration, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. She is also the author of a memoir of gender transition, Through the Door of Life, which was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, and The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards and the Triangle Award. Ladin has received fellowships and scholarships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies Research, among other honors. A nationally recognized speaker on transgender issues, she convenes an online conversation series, “Containing Multitudes,” which is available at JewishLive.org/multitudes. Her writing is available at joyladin.wordpress.com.
