April is National Poetry Month, a month dear to Alliance since 1999, the year we launched our Creative Writing Workshop. Since then, this weekly gathering has been a safe, inspiring community where participants find their creative spark and share in Alliance’s comprehensive services and supports for people living with HIV and other chronic health conditions.
“What started as an experiment with just four or five participants grew into an extremely popular group with as many as 25 or 30 participants at a time,” said Gerry Gomez Pearlberg, a poet and writer who facilitated the workshop from the beginning through its 16th year. “We wrote everything from sonnets and haiku to rap songs and love poems.”
One long-time member, Rosa Velez, first attended the group in 2008 looking for an avenue to process her grief over losing her partner, after someone suggested she release her emotions via creative writing. “A lot of those early poems were really angry, and dark,” Rosa said, noting that letting out heavy emotions can feel renewing. “Time passed and all of a sudden, my senses were awake, I could see everything in the world, and I realized that the people in the room with me had gone through so much more than I had. Something just clicked, they woke me up, and gave me so much perspective.”
Rosa has published poems such as “A Bird Cries Out” and “The Morning Sun” in Situations, Alliance’s annual collection of poetry by members of the group.
Like Rosa, Harriet McNeill joined the writing group looking for a way to express intense emotions, in 2015. “I never used to like writing, but it pulled some things that I needed to learn to understand who I am and who I’m meant to be. A lot of times, I was dealing through stuff, and I’d go to the group and write, write, write. It has inspired my life so much.” Harriet is the author of “Crossed Surroundings of a Precious Life” and more than a dozen other poems.
Today, Rosa and Harriet co-facilitate the group, which returned to in-person gatherings in September 2021. The Zoom format was challenging for the facilitators and participants, Rosa explained, because so much of the group’s power came from being physically surrounded by other people creating and imagining together. The group had drawn energy and inspiration from their weekly interactions in the Zwickler Family Poetry Room—Alliance’s sunny and inviting space in our Midtown Central site. This spacious room is named for Phil Zwickler, a renowned documentary filmmaker and AIDS activist who died of the disease in 1991—as well as Phil’s father Seymour, and brother-in-law, Michael Levine. Phil died young—at 36—at a time when effective treatments for HIV were few and far between. This beautiful space sponsored by the generosity of the Zwickler family—who have strongly supported the Creative Writing Workshop over many years—contributes to the group’s experience.
“It’s important to have lots of sunlight, lots of natural sounds for inspiration,” observed long-time group member and workshop leader Azeem Khan.
From Left to Right: Azeem Khan, Velia Hernandez, and Rosa Velez. Photo: David Nager/Alliance
To sustain that group connection despite the challenges of the pandemic, members of the Creative Writing Workshop met in the back garden of Alliance’s Keith Haring Center almost every month, wearing masks and social distancing. “We talked a lot about our fears and our lives,” Rosa explained.
Alliance’s Creating Writing Workshop has become an institution and tradition, with annual (pre-pandemic) readings at Barnes & Noble Union Square and yearly editions of Situations showcasing the participants’ talents and generously sponsored by the Phil Zwickler Charitable and Memorial Foundation Trust.
“Alliance keeps us close to Philip’s heart and a place he would have been proud to be involved with,” said Caren Levine, Phil’s surviving sister and Trustee of the Phil Zwickler Charitable and Memorial Trust. “We’ve loved going to the group’s meetings and the readings at Barnes & Noble. My brother Phil loved the arts and he believed in supporting organizations like Alliance that specifically support people in need.”
Some of Phil’s poems can be read on the foundation’s website.
The late Diane Dawson, Creative Writing Workshop member, at Barnes & Noble reading in 2011. Photo: David Nager/Alliance
Left to Right: Caren Levine, Sharen Duke, Bill Toler, Allen Zwickler, and “E” (a.k.a. EROBOS). Photo: David Nager/Alliance
Karlene Forbs has attended the Creative Writing Workshop, as well as Alliance’s Food and Nutrition and Women’s Services groups, for almost two decades. She says what’s great about the group is that “you don’t have to be an experienced writer to write—just use whatever comes to mind and inspires you.”
Azeem told Metro that the group allowed him to “have a conversation” with his past instead of an argument. “When you suffer trauma, it plays in your head, and it’s like you start to argue in your own mind. With poetry, I got to put it on paper, see these words, understand these words, and connect with other people in the group. I think that’s very important.”
After 16 years of leading the group, Gerry moved away from New York City, and Alliance arranged for longtime members Rosa and Azeem to take the helm as the group’s facilitators. A special Poetry Leader training had already been offered for years, enabling other participants to run the group in Gerry’s absence, in keeping with Alliance’s commitment to building peer-based leadership capacity among our participants.
When Gerry left, Rosa and Azeem were more than ready to take on full responsibility for all the group’s logistics, including curating poems for Situations. “When Gerry worked with us, she was so knowledgeable and I would just soak it up like a sponge,” said Rosa. “When I took over, I had to really learn about poets, and metaphors, and different rhythms to coach people up like she did.”
“Alliance’s Executive Director and CEO Sharen Duke was well aware of how art and creativity connect to healing and well-being,” said Gerry, “Sharen was strongly committed to offering creative programming as part of Alliance’s comprehensive, whole-person approach, and really made it possible for this amazing, long-term creative phenomenon to happen.”
Twenty-three years later, the Creative Writing Workshop is an enduring testimony to the power of poetry and creative expression as a tool for healing and growth. It is a sustained community with an enormous body of literary work behind it—including one former participant, Iris Elizabeth Sankey-Lewis, who has written more than 5,000 haiku, a short-form Japanese style of poetic expression she learned about and fell in love with during her many years in the group.
“I am always so inspired by the poets in the Creative Writing group. The act of writing and expressing your emotions takes courage,” said Ramona Cummings, Alliance’s Chief Program Officer and Liaison to the Creative Writing Workshop. “Each poem is testament to their commitment to healing and overcoming life’s situations. I’m so grateful to be part of an organization that understands that healing, recovering, and overcoming can be accomplished through platforms such as creative writing.”
The group has yielded some unexpected benefits as well. Some poets have told us that the group helped them improve their English language and reading skills, develop presentation skills that supported their efforts to gain employment, and increase their confidence with public speaking.
“Creative writing was a safe place for me when I was dealing with homelessness, domestic violence, and later, with my HIV diagnosis,” said Ashley Johnson, an Alliance staff member who joined the workshop in 2007. “Seeing my poems published and reading them in Barnes & Noble, I felt accomplished. It boosted my self-esteem and started the process of me wanting to change my situation—the change I deserved.”
Ashley Johnson at the Creative Writing Workshop, 2009. Photo: David Nager/Alliance
The group has seen plenty of loss. Rufino Colón, Jr.—a longtime group member from day one, and one of the first Poetry Leaders to fill in when Gerry was away, passed away in March 2022. Rufino was a brilliant poet who facilitated groups comfortably and made participants feel at ease, according to several longtime members. He kept in contact with the group frequently for years after he was no longer a weekly participant, and he and Gerry maintained a correspondence until the end of his life.
Rufino Colon Jr. Photo: David Nager/Alliance
Darryl Wells is yet another person who attests the group’s deep impact. “I came to the Creative Writing Workshop grieving the loss of my mother, who was only 15 years older than me—so she was like my mother as well as my sister, my cousin, my aunt. The act of being able to write really saved my life,” said Darryl. “Rosa wrote me a poem, that, when I was going through grief, I’d carry with me everywhere I went. When I couldn’t live for myself and was suicidal, I’d carry that poem with me.”
Previous issues of Situations can be read online here.