GRIEF & SURREALISM ✦ Shannan Mann

Grief doesn't follow linear narratives, and neither should your poems about it. In this workshop, we'll explore how surrealism—with its dreamlike logic, strange juxtapositions, and emotional honesty—can help us write into loss without sentimentality or cliché.

We'll look at contemporary poets who merge the personal with the strange, then move into generative exercises that embrace illogic, image-driven thinking, and metaphor that doesn't explain itself. You'll leave with new drafts and a clearer sense of how surrealism can give grief the language it actually needs.

The second half focuses on getting these poems into the world: which journals publish grief work that takes risks, what editors look for in surreal poetry, and how to craft submissions that stand out. We'll talk about navigating the vulnerability of publishing personal work while building a sustainable writing practice.

• Notebook and pen (or laptop—whatever helps you draft quickly)
• 2-3 poems about grief or loss that you're willing to workshop or reference (published or unpublished)
• If you have experience with submitting, then a list of 5-10 dream literary magazines

Shannan Mann is the Creative Director of ONLY POEMS, Nonfiction Editor of Strange Pilgrims, and also runs Sub Club. Her upcoming poetry collection God Has Nothing To Do With This was a finalist for the 2025 Michael Waters Poetry Prize. Awarded the Emily Morrison Short Story Award, Alta Lind Cook Writing Award, Irene Adler Essay Prize, Peatsmoke Poetry Prize, and Palette Poetry Love & Eros Prize (selected by Carl Phillips), she’s also placed for the Rattle Poetry Prize, Auburn Witness Prize (selected by Joy Harjo), and the Foster Poetry Prize. Her poems appear in Poetry Daily, Black Warrior Review, ARC, Missouri Review, The Offing, Poet Lore, Gulf Coast,The Literary Review of Canada, EPOCH & elsewhere; essays in Tolka Journal and Going Down Swinging. She also translates Sanskrit poetry.