AnCan and The Marsh (well renown, long-established theater company with a large following in the Bay Area and venues in San Francisco and Oakland) collaborate every 4th Wednesday of the month for Solo Arts Heal!
We started 2023 off with guest, Claire Gaskin!
Claire is a poet who has published five volumes of poetry since 1998, most recently Ismene’s Survivable Resistance in 2021. (If you remember the Greek tragedy of Antigone, Ismene is the sister who was left behind to remember the trauma of it all). Claire has been a creative writing teacher and mentor for more than 30 years. She teaches not only at the university level but also dedicates herself to helping students at community centers to use writing to process trauma. In addition, she collaborated on an innovative research project, “Left / Write // Hook,” that uses writing and non-contact boxing to process trauma and led to her co-editing an anthology of participants’ writings. Claire’s work is rooted in her own trauma, which began in childhood, and experiences with physical ailments, which include “keyhole” surgery to mend a broken heart.
Claire read her poetry, which provides her with a survival tool to both navigate and move past experiences of abuse and disempowerment. It explored how survivors’ voices can enter public discourse and instigate lasting social and cultural change. People who have been traumatized may not have a linear narrative. Poetry is a means to integration through the placement of fragments, allusion, association and evocation. Poetry can hold what is too intense to keep internalized.
Watch here: