Mobius: Writing Through Trauma to Revise the Myths of Family —
A Feminist Poetic

A Work in Progress session with Jan Freeman

Jan Freeman

 

The poems in Mobius attempt to examine family legacy and unwind fallacies and acts of tyranny and assault within my immediate and extended family, which idolized and idealized the perpetrators. The exploration of family dictates and mythologies form the structural floor of the Mobius poems. They reflect a journey of identity and examine the ways in which family relationships are mirrored in politics and society. What is true? What is false? What do we believe in the framework (the commandments) of love and obedience?

Jan Freeman is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Blue Structure (Calypso Editions), and is co-editor of Sisters: An Anthology (Wesleyan University Press/Paris Press). Her poems are forthcoming or recently appeared in Barrow Street, The Brooklyn Rail, North American Review, On the Seawall, Poetry, Plume, and Salamander. She is the recipient of the Moulin a Nef Spiral Shell Fellowship, and is a 2020-2022 associate at the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center, which has provided a sanctuary of community and safety as she works on her manuscript in progress, Mobius. Jan was the longtime director of the nonprofit feminist literary publisher Paris Press, which she founded to bring back into print Muriel Rukeyser’s The Life of Poetry. She teaches weekly poetry workshops and the MASS MoCA Ekphrastic Poetry Retreats, and provides editorial services to poets and writers. www.janfreeman.net.

Wednesday, March 23
11am - 12pm EST
Remote over Zoom