Led Saúl Hernández, a queer writer from San Antonio, TX who was raised by former undocumented parents. Saúl has an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Texas at El Paso. His debut poetry collection, How to Kill a Goat & Other Monsters, is out now from University of Wisconsin Press. Saúl is the recipient of a 2025 Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He's the winner of both the 2022 Pleiades Prufer Poetry Prize (judged by Joy Priest) & the 2021 Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize (judged by Victoria Chang). Saúl’s work is forthcoming/featured in The American Poetry Review, Sundog Lit, Poetry Daily, The Slowdown, Literary Hub, Columbia Journal, Pleiades, Split This Rock, Frontier Poetry, Poet Lore, Foglifter Journal, Oyster River Pages, Cherry Tree, Atlanta Review, Quarterly West, PANK Magazine, Pidgeonholes, The Acentos Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, The Normal School, Rio Grande Review, and Adelaid Literary Magazine. He's a Macondista, a 2021 Tin House Alum, & a 2024 Lambda Literary Fellow. 

Learn more about Saúl in our Meet the Teaching Artist series.

Grief has the ability to lock our emotions, thoughts, and body in ways we may not have known could be possible. Yanyi said it best in their book, The Year of Blue Water, “There are places I can’t go, like outside my body.”

In this course, we will explore grief through poetry: What shapes do our bodies take, how do we process grief, what does grief look like for each of us, and how do we mend what we can’t see?

In our six weeks together, we will also explore what remains lingering before, during, and after death: How does society view death, how does a community grieve, and how do we, as a collective, approach such a vulnerable topic?

Throughout our time together, we will read poems from Victoria Chang, Eduardo C. Corral, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Ocean Vuong, Susan Nguyen, jj peña, and Yanyi, among others.

We will discuss form, white space, imagery, the speaker’s voice, and ultimately, what is at risk in each poem.

COURSE OUTLINE

Week 1: What does grief look like?

Week 2: How do we process grief?

Week 3: How do we live & move with grief?

Week 4: Workshop

Week 5: Workshop

Week 6: Workshop

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

• How grief is able to move us in the world.
• Creating beauty out of grief.
• Learn about other poets and what they have done with their grief.
  

ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE: