Local Poet and Professor Presents Generative Writing Workshop

On Saturday, Nov. 7, from 10:00 am - noon, Elisabeth Weiss, a poet and professor at Salem State University, will present a generative writing workshop, “The Caretaker’s Lament: Gratitude and Grief,” at the Abbot Public Library.

Taking care of a loved one who can no longer care for themselves can leave you feeling like a superhero on the best days, and exhausted and isolated on others. If you are in need of respite, company or creative engagement, join the library for a light breakfast, coffee, conversation, and some group writing prompts which will help look at blessings as well as losses.

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Weiss, whose chapbook, The Caretaker’s Lament, will be published shortly by Finishing Line Press, cared for her mother and father in her Marblehead home with the combined teamwork of many relatives, friends, and health care workers. She well understands that caregivers who often work outside the home, and who often still have children living at home, need quiet time for reflection, rest, and connection to community. This workshop will provide a perfect opportunity for all experiencing these needs.

Elisabeth Weiss was born in Staten Island, New York. She attended Kirkland College, holds a BA from Hamilton College (1980) and an MFA from The University of Iowa Writers Workshop (1983). She’s worked as a freelance editor, copyeditor, and editorial assistant at Harper and Row in New York. Elisabeth has taught poetry in preschools, prisons, and nursing homes, as well as to the intellectually disabled. She helps produce the yearly Massachusetts Poetry Festival in Salem.

Elisabeth is a past president, vice president and board member of the Clifton Improvement Association and is a docent for the Lee Mansion. Her poems have appeared in many publications.

Kathleen Spivack, author of With Robert Lowell and His Circle, wrote that The Caretaker’s Lament “… shows us survival in the face of grief: the beginnings of renewal and the circularity of memory, dreams, and discoveries. Written with great delicacy, these poems speak of family life and carefully observed loss. Honesty, humor, empathy and intelligence inform the work…”

David Rigsbee, poet, translator and editor of the Cortland Review wrote of The Caretaker’s Lament: “The scenes and portraits that comprise the moving, deeply felt, and humane poems…do the astonishing thing of holding joy and sorrow in the same visionary moment, which is to say they bear both terrible and tender witness to time’s shaping battle with love.”

Please register at the Library’s main desk or call 781-631-1481. The Abbot Public Library is located at 235 Pleasant Street, Marblehead, MA 01945. For additional information, please call 781-631-1481 or visit www.abbotlibrary.org.