"Asserting Agency in the Face of Death" – The Poetry of Mourning
Added 2019-03-26 18:54:17 +0000 UTCGreetings Deathlings,
It's a good day for a brand new, hot off the presses article on The Order site!
"Inventing Farewell: Poetry as a Mortuary Practice" examines when author and professor David Sherman created a class for his students to forge and reinvent their relationship with the dead.
These students were brave. The assignments were weird.
The class read contemporary poems to discover what they have to offer a modern world searching for meaningful ways to hold vigil, bear witness, care for corpses, and create meaningful contact between the living and dead. Sherman taught the course out of a belief “That poetry of mourning is a powerful, if neglected, resource for asserting agency in the face of death today.”
Immersed in poetry, students were challenged to think of imaginative solutions to real problems. They designed a necropolis or memorial park, brainstormed commemoration practices that could gather the bereaved, proposed neighborhood historical exhibits, wrote their own poetry, and created maps of funerary spaces. By the end of the semester, students came to realize that we need not be passive in the terrible challenge of another’s dying.
It's stuff like this that really makes me believe that children are the future (of death positivity).
And as for MORE CONTENT coming down the pipeline, we have a new episode of Death in the Afternoon coming out this week and a new video coming out in the first week of April.
Thank you deathlings for your enduring support,
In life and in death I shall be your cohort.
POETRY.
Sincerely,
Caitlin
