Hello, everyone! The work I’d like to present today is my cento poem, “to grieve.” A cento is a poem made up of lines from other works of poetry written by other poets. My process for this poem was finding one line that I liked and centering the theme around that line, and the way I did that was by looking through my poetry book and finding lines that stuck out to me. I did not use more than two lines from any poems. The poets that I used for today’s poem are Charif Shanahan, Susan Wheeler, Marie
Howe, Jericho Brown, Matt Rasmussen, Ada Limón, Lia Purpura, Nicole Sealy, Donika Kelly, Laura Kasischke, and Solmaz Sharif. This poem is about grief, and I created it on the day of my cousin’s funeral. I used a winding-down tunneled structure, to mimic how grief can send you into a downward spiral. I also used no capitalization because the wake of losing someone can make you feel very small and alone.
Presented by Alyssa Khuffash at Lewis University’s Eleventh Annual Celebration of Scholarship
Alyssa Khuffash – Asst. Prose Editor: Alyssa is a Junior at Lewis University majoring in English with a concentration in Writing. She is also minoring in Creative Writing and Theology. She enjoys walking her dog, taking care of her plants, reading, and listening to music. Some of her favorite authors include Katherine Arden, Holly Black, and Madeline Miller. She hopes to improve her writing while at Lewis and apply her skills to her future as a writer.