we the soil: april 2025
workshops in May/June 2025; plus, a brief interview with Talicha J.!
I’m so excited to begin our journey on Substack with a brief interview with . Talicha J. is a Black queer poet and teaching artist. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and was a Collaborating Fellow with The Poetry Lab. She is the author of “Falling in Love with Picking Myself Up” (2015), and “Taking Back the Body” (2024). Talicha J. facilitates virtual generative workshops and co-runs the virtual writing retreat, Camp Write Start. She is a reader for Frontier Poetry and her work can be found on the Button Poetry YouTube channel and in several literary journals.
I met Talicha in a workshop through The Poetry Lab and immediately connected with her vibrance and humor. She is so fun! She is also a powerful poet. I actually had to reach out to her after a reading that she organized to ask if I could include one of her poems in my recent workshop.
I see her as a prolific and generous teaching artist because she consistently designs resources and creates supportive spaces for writers while making them all very accessible. Please check out her website and her new YouTube channel. You can also join her mailing list and find her on Instagram.
Enjoy this interview! Then, scroll down to learn about one of Talicha’s upcoming offerings among several others in this month’s listing.
Interview with Talicha J.
Yomalis: I have seen you post about how you participated in many workshops last year and that you also wrote many poems last year. I know you have numbers! Is there any correlation between the number of workshops you attended and how many poems you drafted? Why did you attend so many workshops, and what did you learn about your creative practice through that experience?
Talicha: Yes! Over the past two years, I attended a ton of workshops and ended up writing 310 poems—wild, considering I used to struggle to write even five a year. Of those, only one was written outside of a workshop. Some spaces, like Poetry Xfit, pushed me to draft multiple poems in a single session.
It all started with a six-week workshop at the end of 2022—I hoped it would reconnect me with my craft, and it did. That experience reminded me I could still write, that I was still a poet, and it sparked a desire to explore more workshops. I was surprised by how many virtual generative spaces existed, and as I built my creative circle, I kept finding more.
What I learned about my process is that I don’t have to write alone. Being in a Zoom room with like-minded creatives, reading poems together, and discussing craft expanded how I see poetry. It changed how I enter a poem—with curiosity and a willingness to see where it takes me. That’s the beauty of workshops—you never really know where a prompt will lead.
Yomalis: I hear you! Deep in the struggle of early motherhood, workshops were pretty much the only way I could sit and write. I needed the community, accountability, and prompts to get me there.
This is kind of a broad question, so feel free to take it any direction you wish: Can you say more about what you noticed about yourself as a poet through the workshop experience? Do you have an example of a moment or workshop that felt like a turning point in your writing or approach to writing?
Talicha: Attending so many workshops taught me just how much I thrive with structure. There’s something about having dedicated time to write, plus the accountability of being in a room with other poets, that just works for me. I also realized how much fun I have when working with structured forms—it feels like a challenge to fit the pieces of the poem into the box of the form. And even more fun to break the rules! Ultimately, I think the biggest thing I’ve learned about myself as a poet through these experiences is that playfulness and having fun push me to create more.
I don’t know if there was a single moment or workshop that felt like the turning point for me—there have been too many amazing teaching artists and spaces to boil it down to just one. But overall, having these spaces where I could show up as myself (sometimes in my pajamas, since almost all of them were virtual—lol) made all the difference. When it came to stepping into my role as a teaching artist, Bee LB was instrumental in helping me take that leap. The two of us would facilitate one-on-one workshops, alternating each week. That time was so key in helping me build my confidence, and I’ll always be grateful to them for that.
Yomalis: Perfect transition to my final question: What are you noticing about yourself as a workshop facilitator? How has designing workshops and facilitating them impacted your own writing practice—or how do they connect for you?
Talicha: One thing I’ve noticed fairly recently is how much being a teaching artist has boosted my confidence. I feel more comfortable stepping up and taking up space in ways that help others feel at ease. I’m able to invite silence into the workshop—to let folks gather their thoughts during our conversation time—instead of inwardly panicking and rushing us forward. Because of that, the discussion portions of my workshops have become more robust and engaging.
As for the impact of designing and teaching workshops on my writing... I can’t say it’s been a major shift. Like I mentioned earlier, I’m someone who needs a workshop space to write—if I don’t have that structure, I probably won’t make time for it. So when I’m the one facilitating, it just gives me another opportunity to sit down and create. I think the deeper connection between teaching and writing, for me, lies in how I show up. Whether I’m the participant or the teaching artist, I’m present, actively listening, and paying attention to the different ways people interpret a piece or see it from new angles. Both roles are important to my experience as a poet.
upcoming workshops
below, you will find a listing of workshops taking place in May/June 2025. you can submit a workshop for next month’s newsletter using this Workshop Submission Form.
Camp Write Start with Talicha J., Priscilla Thomas, and Nikki Gray
Looking for a creative space that meets you where you are? Camp Write Start is back for another summer of writing, connection, and low-pressure magic. Whether you’re drafting something new, trying to rebuild your writing rhythm, or just want to be in community with other creatives—you’ve got a place here. Expect daily opportunities to show up for your writing in whatever way works for you, from co-writing sessions to workshops, journaling to art-making.
When: July 6 - August 2, 2025
Where: Online
Payment: $275 (Early Bird Pricing); $300 after June 6
The Creative Hour with Emma Lillemor Reynolds
Each Sunday, I post a unique, hour-long lesson plan— you can also think of it as a workout— so that you can make the most of your creative time once you have it. The plans are built to be adjustable to your artistic process and medium—they will help you build creative habits and spark ideas. And they can be done anytime during the week. You can also find information about Emma's in-person writing workshop in Portland, Maine here.
When: Sundays
Where: Online
Payment: $59/month
MAKE TIME - May with emily brandt
brief meditations * generative prompts * optional sharing
In the spirit of morning pages as a practice, we’ll gather early on four Tuesdays to write from a soft space still close to dream state, with little expectation and tremendous openness and hope. Each session includes a brief, grounding meditation, time to respond to the creative prompts, and optional sharing. We will not be workshopping or critiquing. Instead the focus is on generation and flow. Bring a notebook and warm beverage.
When: Tuesdays in May | 10:00 - 11:00am ET
Where: Online
Payment: Sliding Scale, $80 - $160
GUERILLA POETICS I with Ica Sadagat
This course begins a larger ongoing series Guerilla Poetics curricula. In GP1, we will study freedom schools, agrarian movements, martial art histories, multiple, insurgencies, and more. We’ll hone our writing, challenge the role + identity of poet, disregard metaphor to prioritize material realities, and condition ourselves toward freer futures.
This is an 8-week deep study toward liberatory training, embodied listening, and tactical language. There are 4 synchronous gatherings and 4 asynchronous guided supplementary reflections that you can do at your own pace.
When: Synchronous classes on Wednesdays, May 28, June 11, June 25, & July 9 | 6:30pm - 8:00pm EST (in addition to an asynchronous component)
Where: Online
Payment: Sliding Scale, $5 - $400+
The Music of Minor Distractions: A Multi-genre Revision Workshop with Nicole Arocho Hernández
In this course, we will pay attention to what exists at the periphery of our current drafts and move through a revision process that embraces strangeness, unmaking and remaking, and unconventional approaches to plot and/or poetics.
When: Wednesday, June 11 | 6:30 - 8:00pm ET
Where: Online
Payment: Sliding Scale starting at $25; $10 for Writers in Need
_____ FOR THE FUTURE with Darshita Jain, Sarah Free, & Shivani Gupta
We have spent the month of April writing letters to strangers on the internet around the themes of Despair, Love & Tomorrow (more details below). We would love to start May by gathering in community and share some poems, some conversation, share snacks & write letters to ourselves, to strangers, to loved ones. We'll bring the poems, the prompts, and everything you may need, you bring yourself <3
We invite you to join us for a virtual gathering to scream, sing, co-create rituals, write letters for the future.
When: Saturday, May 3, 2025 | 10:00 - 11:30am CST
Where: Online
Payment: Donations for the Chicago Poetry Center starting at $1
*The same gathering is happening in person in Chicago on May 9, 5:30-7:30pm CST. See details here.
SPEED SCRIPTING with Float and Friends
This session is designed to exercise your screenwriting skills in community with others. We'll have a few rounds of speed scripting, where participants will be given a random prompt and a brief amount of time to write a draft, with the timer running, before those comfortable can share aloud.
This is a practice that can help with writer's block, brainstorming, and getting ideas flowing. It's also a fun way to write together, and the results are usually amusing, reminiscent of Mad Libs <3.
When: Tuesday, May 6, 2025 | 9:00 - 10:00pm ET
Where: Online
Payment: FREE! *Must RSVP
Between Transparency and Opacity: A Translation Workshop with Maru Pabón and Yasmine Seale
Metaphors of clarity and darkness abound in discussions around the politics of literary translation. A distrust of visibility and simplicity—in many ways the product of modernism’s self-avowed gestures of resistance to commodification—has often led to the championing of the obscure or untranslatable. At the same time, the charge of untranslatability has historically served to cordon off certain languages and literary genres from the realm of the commensurate: a gesture with significant ethical and aesthetic consequences. When the Arabic language, for instance, is repeatedly depicted as rhetorical, strange and potentially deranged, what creative options are made unavailable to the translator? Conversely, when revolutionary poems in a language like Spanish (associated with cultural poverty in the mainstream imagination) are categorized as “simple,” what sort of vision of political literature gets reproduced? Through study and creative exercises, this workshop will explore the possibilities of dislodging the opposition between transparency and opacity. Can we conjure up new metaphorical paradigms for thinking about the relationship between linguistic surface and political gesture?
When: Sundays, June 1 - June 29, 2025 (5 sessions) | 11:00am - 1:00pm ET
Where: Online
Payment: $200
Using Folklore to Tell Our Stories with Soraya Palmer
Folktales, fairy tales, urban legends, ghost stories, and other tales of the oral tradition are often the first stories we hear as children. Whether a story passed down from a family member or seen in a Disney movie, they often shape our worldviews in unexpected ways. Sometimes folktales are used to tell an alternate version of history, to heal from trauma, or to reveal the absurdities of systemic oppression—-often while using humor and a little bit of magic.
In these four sessions, we will look at the stories we may have learned as children. Why do these stories stick with us? How can we use the elements of folklore to create our own pieces?
When: Wednesdays, May 7 - May 28, 2025 (4 sessions) | 7 - 9pm ET
Where: Online
Payment: $360
CREATE TOGETHER with tiffany wong
Create Together used to be a monthly gathering, and it has been awhile since I’ve hosted one. What better time than the spring to tap into creating for our nourishment. Liberatory Imagination is about the power of the people and what we can build. It is about what is possible. The goal is to tap into our creativity and play without expectations of an outcome. Let’s do it together and be reminded that we aren’t alone on this healing journey and resisting the empire.
I will set up the space through grounding and orienting the group to the intention of reclaiming art as an act of love, joy, liberation, self compassion, and anything that you want to be rooted in that evening. Then, for the next hour or so, we will be creating art - with your video on or off. Feel free to work on your existing personal projects or create new works of art. After the art session, I will open up for folks who want to share their experience (totally optional). It will be a simple and hopefully deeply nourishing for all of us.
When: Tuesday, May 6, 2025 | 5:00 - 6:30pm PT
Where: Online
Payment: Sliding Scale, $5 - $25
Gel Plate Printing Inspired by Nature with Elaine G. Chu
Create a set of stunning monoprint cards, using a gel plate and found objects—specifically leaves from trees, bushes, or houseplants. In this two-hour workshop with Elaine G, Chu, students will work with botanical elements as silhouette masks while also making ghost prints with fine detail.
The instructor will present demos and provide tips on techniques. Each participant will print several cards or single sheets. We will use one of the cards as a cover for sewing a pamphlet-stitch book. Most of class time will be spent with participants doing hands-on printing while having the opportunity to share art in progress.
All levels welcome. No previous experience or printing presses required!
When: Sunday, June 15, 2025 | 11:00am - 1:00pm ET
Where: Online
Payment: $40; $90 with Materials Kit
for more making,
yomalis