2024 Virtual Speaker Series
I Learn by Going Where I Have to Go: Conversations with Writers about their Influences and Models
About the series
In one of Theodore Roethke’s most well-known villanelles, “The Waking,” he repeats four times, with variations, “I learn by going where I have to go." We can all reflect on the work of writers who have been influences on our own writing and our lives, either in their general approaches to the craft or in specific poems.
In this series, four well-established poet teachers will share poems and stories from the writers who helped shape their craft and approaches to poetry, along with sharing their own poems where they see the influence of these models and mentors. Help us celebrate National Poetry Month 2024 by joining in these conversations. There will be time for questions and comments from participants before the session concludes. Sessions will meet each Tuesday in April from 7:00 to 8:00 PM ET.
About the session
Guillermo Delgado, an interdisciplinary artist and educator at Michigan State University, shares how his interest in Non-Western poetic forms like the pantoum and ghazal and his experience teaching poetry workshops in prisons informs his poetry practice. The presentation will include a reading of his own poems and an exploration of poems by Agha Shahid Ali, Patricia Smith, Luisa A. Igloria, and Evie Shockley.
About Guillermo Delgado
Guillermo Delgado teaches courses in art, poetry, community engagement, and contemplative practices like yoga, meditation, and walking. In 2014, he began facilitating creative workshops in men’s correctional facilities, including the juvenile detention center in Lansing. In addition to completing a 200-hour yoga teacher training program, he is trained in prison and trauma-informed yoga through The Prison Yoga Project.
As an interdisciplinary artist and educator, he strives to create safe, accessible, and mindful learning opportunities everywhere he goes. Recently he has embarked on a quest to reclaim his maternal language and to dream in Spanish again by reading and writing poetry in Spanish and learning to play Son Jarocho music, a regional folk musical style of Mexican Son from Veracruz.
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