Archiving Smoke: an online poetry workshop with Alycia Pirmohamed

In this workshop, we will explore archival poetics and consider archives – and archival spaces – as both theme and source. What are the politics that underlie what is deemed important enough for ‘permanent’ preservation? What materials might purposely evade personal and public archives? We will engage with the practice of docupoetry, read material related to archival reclamation and resistance, and consider how our own mediums and writing processes simultaneously memorialise and erase. The session will include close reading, discussion, and writing exercises. A list of pre-reading materials including poetry and longer works will be shared with participants in advance. Note: the title of this session borrows from works by Bhanu Kapil and Sarah Howe.

All fees from this workshop go directly to Alycia and we encourage you to receive this warm welcome by either attending or sharing with like-minded others.

Alycia Pirmohamed is the author of the poetry collection Another Way to Split Water. Her other works include Hinge, Faces that Fled the Wind, and the collaborative work, Second Memory, which was co-authored by Pratyusha. Her nonfiction debut A Beautiful and Vital Place won the 2023 Nan Shepherd Prize for nature writing and is forthcoming with Canongate. Alycia currently teaches on the Creative Writing master’s at the University of Cambridge. She is the co-founder of the Scottish BPOC Writers Network and a co-organiser of the Ledbury Poetry Critics, and she is the recipient of several awards including a Pushcart Prize, the CBC Poetry Prize, and the 2020 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award.

Established in 2018, the87press is an Asian, LGBTQIA+, and neurodiverse led publishing collective and events curator in South London. We prioritize modernism, anti-colonialism, anti-racism, and environmentalism in our print publications of poetry, fiction, and essays. Additionally, we offer educational and creative workshops, industry leading live events, and regular commissioned work