Writing Co-Lab

While sex doesn’t have to be a spiritual experience—sex can just be sex!—there's no denying that for some, there are transcendent moments when sex and the sacred touch each other. Sometimes that touch is gentle, and intimate. Sometimes that touch is overwhelming, or even grotesque in its unexpectedness. But either way, it's undeniable in its potency.

So what is it about sex that allows it to be—if one so chooses—an ecstatic experience, fully embodied and beyond the physical body all at once? How can one even manage to articulate it on the page, or in song? It's a mystery older than poetry itself, and in this workshop the poets we'll be reading from reckon with eros and the sacred in a surprising variety of ways.

This 1-session workshop will include a brief artist talk, followed by group conversation of selected poems, and writing time.

About the Instructor

Natasha Oladokun is a Black, queer poet and essayist from Virginia. She earned a BA in English from the University of Virginia, and an MFA in creative writing from Hollins University. She holds fellowships from Cave Canem, The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Jackson Center for Creative Writing, Twelve Literary Arts, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was the inaugural First Wave Poetry fellow. Her work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets, Image, Harvard Review Online, Kenyon Review Online, Harper’s Bazaar, Catapult, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and is working on her first collection of poems.

Student Testimonials

• “Natasha is awesome. I really love her classes and find her really helpful with seeking depth, and analyzing the starting point, or catalyst, to a poem. She has a keen ear for what is truly magical.”
• “Natasha is wonderful! Her consideration of language permeates her instruction in the most beautiful way. The class was well paced and well constructed. Would take another workshop with her without hesitation!”
• “In addition to being excellent at her craft, Natasha Oladokun is an exceptional teacher. She modeled incredibly compassionate and constructive feedback that never held back in its striving for excellence.”
• “Natasha facilitated conversation and workshops with care and expertise, and was very generous with her time and knowledge.”
• “[T]hat’s what made the workshop structure so different from others Natasha has taught. Whereas normally workshop feedback tends to focus too heavily on the minutiae of the poem’s structure —“Why did you break the line here?” — Natasha’s First Wave workshop cut straight to the meat of the process: “Looking at what the poem is saying as opposed to how it is behaving,” and saving the minutiae for the final review process.”