LA Poet helps LGBT Seniors Find Their Voice Through Poetry
Friend of WOW Steven Reigns conceptualized and created My Life is
Poetry, an autobiographically poetry writing workshop for Lesbian,
Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender seniors 11 years ago. It
brings critical education, emotional expression to a chronically under served population. The workshop was the first of 
its kind in the country. The annual workshops and culminating public readings have been thriving.
The workshops and readings have ignited discussions, helped normalize the LGBT aging process and experience, bridged a gap between communities and generations, and helped connect isolated LGBT seniors with peers, and connected GLBT elders with the pleasure of writing poetry. Reigns states, “Autobiographical poetry is a great tool to examine the themes, emotions, and moments in one’s complex life. By exploring the depth of one’s life experience, universals are revealed, giving a writer and reader a sense of interconnection and not being alone.”
The sense of not being alone is an important one for LGBT seniors.
Participants have crafted enjoyable, perplexing, humorous,
shameful, and sometimes troubling life experiences in these works. These elder LGBT students will share their work at a reading tomorrow:
Tuesday, October 3, 2017 at 7:00 PM
The Village at Ed Gould Plaza
1125 N. McCadden Place
Los Angeles, CA
90038
