This is a course of study and creation focused on varied approaches to contemporary experimental poetry and poetics for MFA students interested in expanding an engaged writing practice. Most classes include experiential compositional engagements, inviting solo, small group and whole class activities. Through readings of published work, instructor talks, and group discussions, we ask questions about the conceptual, sociopolitical and critical underpinnings poets propose when approaching poetry with innovative intentions. We inquire into examples of how poets have experimented with alphabet, language, asemics, concrete poetics, procedural constraints (i.e. erasure/palimpsest), listening, sounding and orality, improvisation, polyvocality, digital media, and other text/image/material explorations, while cultivating individual new poetry from all class participants. Final projects might include a reading of new work, a class performance, as well as a constructed language object.
This is a course of study and creation focused on varied approaches to contemporary experimental poetry and poetics for MFA students interested in expanding an engaged writing practice. Most classes include experiential compositional engagements, inviting solo, small group and whole class activities. Through readings of published work, instructor talks, and group discussions, we ask questions about the conceptual, sociopolitical and critical underpinnings poets propose when approaching poetry with innovative intentions. We inquire into examples of how poets have experimented with alphabet, language, asemics, concrete poetics, procedural constraints (i.e. erasure/palimpsest), listening, sounding and orality, improvisation, polyvocality, digital media, and other text/image/material explorations, while cultivating individual new poetry from all class participants. Final projects might include a reading of new work, a class performance, as well as a constructed language object.