Name: Séance Poetry Workshop
Start: 2026-06-21T14:00:00-04:00
End: 2026-06-21T17:00:00-04:00
Location: Lily Dale Assembly, Inc.

$S\u00e9ance Poetry Workshop$

Jun 21, 2026, 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Lily Dale Lyceum, Lily Dale, NY 14752, USA
About the Event:
Trade your pens for (figurative) planchettes! Join this exploration of experimental writing and contribute to the long legacy of poetry crafted through séance. This workshop will include a study of automatic writers like Cora L.V. Scott and renowned poets, like Sylvia Plath and W.B. Yeats, who engaged with Spirit or spiritual principles to generate their work. Participants will likewise engage with spiritual guidance or communion as a means of poetic generation. We will also examine the ways writing through trance or séance can inspire change, offer comfort, and widen a writer’s overall mindscape.

Through a series of collaborative exercises (including writing rituals similar to Spiritualist “séances”, trance writing, and psychometry) we will seek to channel the voices of those who have passed on and translate those voices into poetry. Blending spiritual practice with poetic craft, we will delve into the ultimate power of a poem and the ways this form of experimentation can elicit authenticity divorced from ego.

This generative workshop will be built around ethically sharing our communications through persona poetry, or poetry that speaks from the mouthpiece of another person or figure. Depending on comfort level, participants can choose to channel the spirit of a real or fictional figure through these exercises.

All participants will leave with at least one generated poem and group feedback. We will close with a sharing circle where each attendee will be encouraged to share their poetic experience, if they desire.

It is highly recommended that attendees bring a photo or beloved object of the person or figure they wish to channel.

Presenter Bio:
Kailey Tedesco is a writer, teacher, and caul bearer from Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. Her work explores folkloric revisionism, the occult, and Spiritualism. She has written four full-length collections of poetry, including Lizzie, Speak (winner of White Stag Publishing’s 2018 MS Contest) and MOTHERDEVIL (2025 Elgin Award Nominee). Both of the aforementioned collections engage with revisionist and Spiritualist ideologies to explore Lizzie Borden and Mother Leeds, respectively. She has taught workshops and co-led panels on séance writing with New York City Poetry Society, MASS Poetry, the New Orleans Poetry Festival, and several local book shops and universities across the East Coast. In 2016, she obtained her MFA in Creative Writing from Arcadia University. She now teaches courses on creative writing, horror cinema, and Gothic literature at Moravian University in Bethlehem, PA. A student herself, she has also learned to better connect with her own psychic intuition by participating in workshops led by some of the nation’s most practiced evidential mediums. In her free time, she enjoys crafting Victorian lampshades and spending time with her son. You can find more of her writing in Fairy Tale Review, F(r)iction, Black Warrior Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Electric Literature, and many more.

Website: www.kaileytedesco.com
Instagram: @kaileytedesco