TENDER HAUNT: Autumnal poetics of absence, longing, & memory

LIVE ZOOM EXPERIENCE: Wednesday evenings, SEPTEMBER 10, 17, 24 & OCTOBER 1 | 7 pm - 8:30 EST | Weekly live experience + weekly, post-class digital materials + community space access | $125.00 for all 4 weeks

Prefer a self-paced experience if you can’t make the Zoom sessions? Click here.

This four-week generative poetry writing workshop is a soft, lantern-lit space for writing through what haunts us. Together, we’ll explore the spectral palace of the self—and all of its many rooms. All levels welcome.

In this workshop, we will give shape, structure, and voice to the poetry of longing and endings. We will let autumnal language, imagery, and mood be our doorway. As Autumn is the mother of cyclical transformation and dying, how do we greet absences and endings?

Which memories live at the edge of your dreams? What versions of you still linger in childhood bedrooms or old houses? What is the voice of your yesterday-self? How do our bodies mirror the cycles of the natural world? What does the grief-void look like? What absence now haunts you? What is the language of your longing? Who is the unreachable beloved? What are we clinging to? What must be released?

Each week, we’ll closely read work by poets and writers who dwell in the space of memory—looking back, back, back to where grief and beauty intertwine. We will also write about the ache, the tenderness, & the excavation process itself.

This is a space of candlelight, gauzy veils, childhood bedrooms, photographs in boxes under the bed, dust motes, nostalgia, the saturated dusk light, damp & slow mornings, the hush just before sleep, streetlamps in the rain, & early autumnal melancholia.

🥀 You can expect:

• Close readings of poems and other prose excerpts

• Guided visualizations to deepen the sensory and emotional experience

• Journaling & creative practices

• Weekly prompts for you to take with you

• Dedicated time to write

• A weekly playlist

• An online community space for conversation, connection, & feedback.

🥀 What you need
Come with your longing, your nostalgia, & your writing devices. Have the ability to use Zoom. Note that we also use Facebook groups for the community aspect. It isn’t perfect, but it’s an easy choice for now.

🥀 Testimonials

“I've just finished Lisa's Summer workshop, Fever Fruit, and it fed my poetry soul so abundantly. Lisa is an excellent facilitator and teacher who somehow managed to get a whole bunch of poetry nutrients into each 90-minute Zoom. I was always left feeling excited about many things, with enough exploratory writing to take away to last me some time. I signed up for her Autumn workshop the minute I got the email about it.” — Z. Carter, workshop participant

“I just finished a four-class workshop with Lisa and can recommend working with her very highly! If you’re looking for a poetry jumpstart or some seasonal magic, definitely sign up!” — S. Caplan, workshop participant

“I'm currently taking a class with Lisa Marie Basile called "Fever Fruit," a generative poetry writing workshop where we draft poems about summer. Lisa is an excellent workshop host and poet.” — N. Hassall, workshop participant

🥀 About me
Lisa Marie Basile is an author, poet, and journalist based in Jersey City, NJ and NYC. She holds an MFA in writing from The New School.

She is the author of a few books of poetry, including SAINT OF (White Stag Publishing, 2025), Nympholespy (Inside the Castle, 2019, finalist in the 2017 Tarpaulin Sky Book Awards), Apocryphal (Noctuary Press, 2014), and Andalucia (The Poetry Society of New York, 2012). She’s also written non-fiction, including Light Magic for Dark Times. She is the founding editor of Luna Luna Magazine.

Her essays, interviews, poetry, and other works can be found in The New York Times, Catapult, Narratively, Tinderbox Poetry, Lover’s Eye Press, Sporklet (edited by Richard Siken), Best Small Fictions (selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Robert Olen Butler), and Best American Experimental Writing 2020 (selected by Carmen Maria Machado and Joyelle McSweeney).

Lisa Marie has also led workshops or spoken at Manhattanville College, Columbia University, Emerson College, Pace University, The Moon Studio, The Author’s Guild, Stanza Books, Astrolushes, Radici Siciliane writing immersion, Brooklyn Brainery, The Poetry Society of New York, and more.

CREATIVE CREDITS: Pinterest + Huang O, Virginia Woolf, & Ellen Bass