SNS | 6-29-24
Join us online for an evening of literary performance and open mic reading
Featuring: Susana Praver-Pérez & Isra Cheema
Theme: Throwback
(scroll down for writing prompt)
Hosted By: Hollie Hardy
Saturday June 29, 2024
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)
Online Event
Free Admission
Sign Up in Advance to Get on the Open Mic List
The theme is optional | Time limit is not optional
Please plan ahead and keep your reading to 3 MINUTES MAX
Scroll down for monthly writing prompt
Join Event on Zoom
Meeting ID: 861 9795 9446
Passcode: 609721
Author Bios
Isra Cheema (she/they) is a queer, Pakistani, spiritual Muslim witch, and poet from the heart of Oklahoma. She holds an MFA from Texas State University and is the Poetry Editor of Porter House Review. She has work forthcoming or published in Ghost City Press, Thin Air Magazine, Gigantic Sequins, and elsewhere. She lives somewhere in between Austin and San Marcos with her two cats, AJ and Rosy. IG: @tiramisruu
Susana Praver-Pérez is a Pushcart-nominated, bilingual poet and visual artist. A former Physician Assistant and Associate Medical Director at La Clinica de la Raza in Oakland, California, Susana left medicine in 2021 after four decades of community service, to pursue her passion for poetry and art on a full-time basis. Susana studied Creative Writing at Berkeley City College, Naropa Institute, U.C. Berkeley’s “Poetry for the People,” and at countless community-based classes. She is an alumna of both Macondo and Las Dos Brujas Writers’ Workshops. Her first full-length book of poetry Hurricanes, Love Affairs, and Other Disasters received the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature (2022). Her second full-length collection Return Against the Flow, published by Black Lawrence Press in 2024, was chosen by both Ms. Magazine and NYU’s Latinx Project as their top 30+ poetry picks for the year. Susana divides her time between Oakland, California and San Juan, Puerto Rico and writes through the lens formed in the liminal space between languages, cultures, and geographies.
website: susanapraverperez.com FB: @susana.praverperez IG: @la.doctora.susana
Write with Friends! Register for The Write-In!
LET’S WORK ON THE THEME TOGETHER!
Join me the week before SNS, on Saturday afternoon, June 22, for the monthly Write-In, a generative online workshop with Hollie Hardy.
Write-In Details/ Sign Up
June Writing Prompt: Throwback
This month’s theme is inspired by the social media trend Throwback Thursday (#tbt) in which people post old photos and share memories for nostalgia or humor, and reflect on the past.
Throwback refers to an atavistic return to previous times—an older way of doing something, the fashion or art or technology of an earlier era, a regression or look backward
Write a poem (or short prose piece) inspired by this month’s theme.
SOME IDEAS:
Get out the box of old photos, or scroll through your social media feed, or go through pics on your phone (the AI generated “for you” and “remember when” albums are always full of surprises) Let one or more of these photos trigger a memory or story to pull you onto the page. Or start a poem composed of photo captions.
A poem in snapshots; fragments of memories
Describe a throw back version of you—when you had different hair and clothes, hobbies, goals, beliefs, attitudes, friends
Write about an earlier time in your life (or in the life of your kids, parents, grandparents) or another era in history
Reflect on the retro details of you childhood, your 20s, 30s, the 1970s, the family vacation, the Roman Empire
Respond to a throwback meme—I get them all the time for 80s stuff, often they are checklists of things that “you are old if you remember”—rotary phones, corduroy pants, old Atari games, VCRs, Cabbage Patch Dolls, Red Rover, crimped hair, passing notes, roller skating, side ponytails, latch key kids, JC penny’s catalogs, boom boxes (the music of your youth). What are the hallmarks of your youth or another time period that feels totally different from now? Let some of those details into your writing.
Write about your old neighborhood before you moved or it changed (or you did)
As ever, the theme is optional—an invitation, not a requirement; feel free to interpret loosely or ignore. The following sample poems offer a variety of different topics and techniques to inspire you. Enjoy!
FOR INSPIRATION
Throwback Night, Midway Skating Rink by Brittany Rogers
Equestrian Monuments (A Litany) by Luis Chaves (translated by Julia Guez and Samantha Zighelboim
Back Then by Trish Crapo
Hip Hop Analogies by Tara Betts
The Throwback by Paul Muldoon
Olympic Drive by Kyle Dargan
Acknowledgments by Danez Smith
The Bad Old Days by Kenneth Rexroth
Balance by Dorianne Laux
Bad Hair Day by Jeffrey McDaniel (short prose)
Charles Bukowski, Family Guy (memoir, essay)
NOTE: The SNS writing prompts will soon be integrated into my new subscription service, Praxis Poetry: Weekly Prompts for Poets