We recently spoke with poet Bonnie Naradzay about her new poetry collection from Slant, Invited to the Feast.
Several of the poems in Invited to the Feast offer a glimpse into your poetry sessions with the homeless in downtown D.C. How did these experiences influence your work?
I’ve been leading these sessions for years; consequently, I am motivated to search for poems by others that would lead to worthwhile conversations. Sometimes I find myself writing about these poetry session experiences—it’s a way to fix them in my memory. It’s also a time when I find myself more intensely alive, as I’m engaged with others in a group effort, a common endeavor. There’s a program called the Touchstones Discussion Project started by Howard Zeiderman, a long-time teacher at St. John’s College in Annapolis; it’s all about working with groups, including inmates in Jessup Prison, in Maryland, towards achieving worthwhile conversations about selected texts. I’ve participated in some of those training sessions.
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