Creating a resilient space
By Linda Lemmon
Town Crier Editor
Putnam’s Poet Laureate Aubrey Waz-Grant started with the theme of the Quiet Corner Pride event, resiliency.
“I thought that was a beautiful place for us to merge my role as poet laureate and my volunteer work on behalf of Quiet Corner Pride.”
Thirteen people attended the poetry writing workshop in the Pomfret Public Library. 
She partnered with Quiet Corner Pride to host a Resiliency Poetry Writing Workshop. 
The theme of this year's Pride festival is Resiliency. 
“Participants will have the opportunity to write their own resiliency poem. Once written, they will have the opportunity to leave the poem with our local artist, Christina Cirillo Schmidt, to be included in the art installation that will be featured at the Pride festival May 2.”
Waz-Grant described what was behind the writing exercise. “I think everybody has had an experience where they’ve had to be resilient, whether they’ve undergone trauma; whether they are queer in a society that doesn’t always accept them. So I wanted to really make a space for people to be able to put that into a poem.”
Christina Schmidt is turning the poems that are submitted into an art installation that will be revealed at Quiet Corner Pride event May 2. 
Waz-Grant said she “noodled around” with what she wanted the workshop to be about for about six weeks. 
The workshop materials challenged writers to helping the reader or listener feel the experience you are talking about in their body. Using the five senses she urged them to write about a past experience and present life. 

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