Poetry Workshop: Odes to Landscapes that Make Us

Write an ode—a ten-line lyric poem that conveys deep emotions—reflecting on the bodily places you call home and the landscapes and memories that shape you. This five-part workshop, led by Diné writer Danielle Sháńdíín Emerson, explores Indigenous creativity and worldviews, connecting visual and verbal storytelling through themes of memory, emotion, and identity. Inspired by George Morrion’s Collage × Landscape, on view in Smoke in Our Hair: Native Memory and Unsettled Time. Recommended for teens and adults.

Danielle Sháńdíín Emerson is a Diné writer from Shiprock, New Mexico, on the Navajo Nation, exploring themes of healing, kinship, language-learning, and family. Her clans are Tłaashchi’i (Red Cheek People Clan), born of Ta’neezaahníí (Tangled People Clan). She holds a B.A. in Education Studies and a B.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University. Emerson served as the Writer-in-Residence for The Associates of the Boston Public Library in 2023–2024. Her work has been published and/or is forthcoming in swamp pink, Uncharted Magazine, Poets.org, Yellow Medicine Review, Thin Air Magazine, The Chapter House Journal, and more.

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Supported in part by the Anita K. Hersh Philanthropic Foundation, Freedom View Foundation, and Ellen Kozak.