Writing Through Loss

By Anne Pinkerton

I always start with the words of poet Ada Limón: “I think poetry is a way of carrying grief, but it’s also a way of putting it somewhere so I don’t have to heave it onto my back or in my body. The more I put grief into a poem, the more I am able to move freely through the world because I have named it, spoken it, and thrown it out into the sky.”

I start here in my workshops because I’ve lived this, and I believe in it fervently, like a religious ritual. For years, I’ve...