This workshop with Kush Thompson, recommended for ages 16+, is part of the Touring Artist Series of the All Writes Reserved Youth Poetry Festival. The event is free, but registration is required.

Cloud in a Bed, Moon in a Cage: How to Reverse-Engineer a Metaphor from Surrealist Imagery

In this workshop, we’ll chisel a rabbit hole into the world within metaphor to discover what transforms when imagery unravels. Inspired by the surrealism of Mahmoud Darwish, Remedios Varo, and Ed, Edd n Eddy, this almost-ekphrastic workshop borrows alchemical imagery, takes it apart, and turns the abstract literal.

Author of A Church Beneath the Bulldozer (2014) and creator of the pink-haired Blk Hottie portraiture series, Kush Thompson is a Chicago-born poet, painter, archivist, educator, and a fellow of Luminarts and Cave Canem. She creates archival art; centering often on girlhood and the mechanics of memory. Her work has appeared in Poetry Magazine and The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop (2015). Kush herself can be found in the VHS bin at any given thrift store somewhere in New Orleans.