What the heck is a peregrinatio?
Find out on February 12th with poet Gloria Heffernan!
WHAT: An evening of reading and writing about place, featuring poet Gloria Heffernan (learn more about Gloria below)
WHEN: February 12, 6-7:30PM CT (7-8:30PM ET, 5-7:30PM MT, 4-5:30PM PT)
WHERE: Zoom
MATERIALS NEEDED: A photo of a place that holds special significance for you, along with your favorite writing tool(s)
REGISTRATION: Free but required. Problems with the button below? Click this link.
CAN’T MAKE IT? Replay will be available!
QUESTIONS? Contact phyllis@phylliscoledai.com.
What the heck is a peregrinatio?
(Hint: Maybe you’re already on one without knowing it.)
Peregrinatio is Latin for “a sacred journey into the unknown.” It’s also the title of Gloria Heffernan’s new poetry collection about her sacred journey to Antarctica.
Our evening will begin with Gloria reading selections from Peregrinatio: Poems for Antarctica. She’ll also share photographs from the profound journey that inspired her book.
Following Gloria’s reading, she’ll invite you to explore your own “sacred journey” in response to a writing prompt about a place that has special significance for your life. (If you can, please bring a photo of that place.) You may write a story, poem, personal reflection . . . it’s up to you!
After the writing session, you’ll have the opportunity to talk about your writing in a small group. All sharing, though encouraged, will be voluntary. You’re also welcome to participate only as a deep listener.
To conclude, we’ll reconvene the larger group and hear from anyone who wishes to read their writing or otherwise respond to what they’ve experienced during the evening.
About the book
In Peregrinatio, poet Gloria Heffernan’s “sacred journey” to Antarctica paradoxically bestows on her the roles of “witness ... trespasser ... messenger [and] ... pilgrim.” Surrounded by humpback whales, penguins, skuas, krill, albatross, ice, and—of course—history, she confronts what the world is both with and without us. In part, Peregrinatio is an environmental treatise. In these poems, we experience “a volcano ... only playing dead ... [and a] beach [as] museum of decomposition.” Everywhere, it seems, are “ghosts of whalers” where “a ruptured cruise ship/hemorrhages black ooze” and humans continue to “play at danger.” However, as these poems attest, here also is a world of wonder and epiphany, a “voyage into the unknown/where miracles still abound.” How to reconcile the two? In poem after poem, Gloria Heffernan invites us to examine with her this perplexing dichotomy.
—Marjorie Maddox, author of Inside Out: Poems on Writing and Reading Poems with Insider Exercises
About Gloria
Gloria Heffernan’s Exploring Poetry of Presence (Back Porch Productions) won the 2021 CNY Book Award for Nonfiction. She also received the 2022 Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Prize. She is the author of the collections Peregrinatio: Poems for Antarctica (Kelsay Books), and What the Gratitude List Said to the Bucket List (New York Quarterly Books). Her forthcoming chapbook, Animal Grace, was selected for the Keystone Chapbook Series prize. Her work has appeared in over 100 publications including Poetry of Presence II. She teaches poetry at Syracuse YMCA’s Downtown Writers Center. To learn more, visit her website.
Questions?
I hope you’re as excited as I am about this upcoming event with Gloria! If you have questions, contact me at phyllis@phylliscoledai.com!