New Orleans Poetry Festival 2026
“Where We Come Together: A Generative Ekphrastic Writing Workshop that Welcomes Both Your Joys and Your Sorrows.”
In Inciting Joy, Ross Gay writes, “What if joy, instead of refuge or relief from heartbreak, is what effloresces from us as we help each other carry our heartbreaks?” After the community joy and success of last year's workshop, we returned to the New Orleans Poetry Festival to bring "Where We Come Together."
This team of artists, Liz Williams-Trader, Keagan Wheat, Tiffany Westry, Aliah Lavonne-Tigh, and Nandi Comer, gathered at the New Orleans Poetry Festival to, yes, to generate writing, and also, something good and healing. Jahan-Tigh proposed this workshop to create a space devoted to the multifaceted unflinching study of the present moment's beauty, grief, and the reality that we are each transformed by feeling what is.
The first half of our workshop began with a screening of Liz Willliams-Trader's short experimental film, Where We Come Together. Created from overlaying the artist's experimental portraiture with video from an outdoor camera, the film achieves a deeply moving and paradoxical reflection on life, culture, death, as the viewer watches life beautifully continue through and beyond our personal griefs. Pictured: Aliah, to the left, in black, guiding the writers through Williams-Trader’s film.
For the second half of our time together, we drew on Tiffany Westry’s photography, post-Helene. Pictured, Keagan Wheat is guiding the writers through Westry’s photos and asking them to write down objects, vibrant colors, and other elements they notice. These elements would then build the foundation for their joy poems. (The projected photo in this image actually features the artist Tiffany Westry.)
After a time of sharing in which we could hear writers share their beautiful and moving poems, poet Nandi Comer helped us close this time together and provide grounding.
As a group of artists, we understand that our larger present moment would not be possible without disassociation on a large scale, and we wanted this time together to create space for Presence and Creativity. We understadn these qualities as antidotes to the ways we violate ourselves and others when we live in numbness. In this way, we hope and know this workshop together will bring waves of positive change that will last longer than our beautiful festival.
Left to Right: Keagan Wheat, Liz Williams-Trader, Aliah Lavonne Jahan-Tigh, and Nandi Comer.
