Apr

23 2023

Poet Willa Schneberg at EJC with Donna Prinzmetal: Reading and signing

3:00PM - 4:30PM  

Eastside Jewish Commons 2420 Ne Sandy Blvd.
Portland, OR 97232
ericstern@ejcpdx.org
https://ejcpdx.org/

Contact Eric Stern
ericstern@ejcpdx.org
https://ejcpdx.org/

$ Cost $ 6.00

It's Poetry Month at EJC! Award-winning Poet Willa Schneberg (founder and curater of OJMCHE's annual reading of "Oregon Jewish Voices”) reads from her new collection of poems relating to mental health, The Naked Room.

Poetry is a form of writing ideally suited to the expression of emotion and to the most profound and subtle workings of the mind. But what if that mind is shattered, and those emotions in disarray? Such is the subject explored in Willa Schneberg’s new poetry collection, The Naked Room, a true synthesis of her life as a psychotherapist and her life as a poet. These are poems of the unconscious, the dreamscape, the despondent, the unmoored, and the mortal.

Poet and psychotherapist Donna Prinzmetal will be the discussant followed by a Q&A from the audience.

All Ages, sliding scale $6-18/person

Doors 2 PM, Reading 3PM

Willa Schneberg is a poet, ceramic sculptor, interdisciplinary artist, essayist, curator, and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, (LCSW) in private practice. She is the author of five prior collections, including In the Margins of the World, Storytelling in Cambodia, and The Books of Esther, a letterpress chapbook produced in conjunction with the eponymous interdisciplinary exhibit, which was on view at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education (OJMCHE).Among the honors she has received are the Oregon Book Award in Poetry; the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Award; second place in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards; two fellowships in Poetry from Oregon’s Literary Arts; residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, and Kathmandu, Nepal; and poems read on the Writer’s Almanac. Her poetry has been translated into Hebrew, Arabic, Nepali, and Korean

The Naked Room is an astonishing and vivid journey into the secret world of psychotherapist and patient ... the poems bring to life in sad, terrifying, and powerful images and voices the reality and precariousness of mental disturbance and the psychotherapist’s work to help the patient heal their self... the delicate, difficult work ... (“it’s like holding a dragonfly by its wings /trying not to tear them off”) ... I think of poems by Sylvia Plath and RobertLowell, and Anne Sexton ... Willa Schneberg is an excellent poet who, from the perspective of the therapist, has opened up for us a world we don’t usually see in poetry. The Naked Room should be required reading for those going into the profession of clinical psychology.” —Pamela Annas, Professor Emerita of English, University of Massachusetts Boston; Poetry Editor, Radical Teacher

Sponsor: Eastside Jewish Commons