Tentacular Thinking & Writing: A Poetry Workshop

Can we think of form as something other than constraint? What if one’s entire life experience were the constraint, as it is for the Afro-Cuban poet Kamau Brathwaite? And where is the body in this? This workshop, open to all, entertains a troubled, tentacular curiosity. Here the class will consider form in relation to time, to response-ability (Haraway), to force, to seeing-skin. How is form energy, as opposed to shape? Together, the class will attempt to track its formations in its own works, and in the poetics/poetry of several modern and contemporary writers. Long Soldier, Moten, NourbeSe-Philip, Celan, Stacy Doris, Aisha Sasha John and Lisa Robertson, among others, will be the workshop’s fellow poeologists …

The workshop leader is experimental poet Sarah Burgoyne. The class work is comprised mainly of group critique of writing participants bring in, discussion of texts/videos, and of writing exercises designed to improve technique and explore new approaches to creation.

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