Poetry, Politics, and Embodiment - Fall 2021

Overview

If, as is understood by the faculty, much of the anxiety about contemporary poetry can be described as an identity crisis — if it is a struggle between the old and the new cast as one having to do with voice, theme, and tradition — then who can inherit the future of poetry is cut along gendered and racialized lines.

We begin from the supposition that poetry is a radical refutation of the world-as-it-is, and as such, is and has been the province of minoritized peoples.

We will think together about poetry as a vehicle of liberation and protest; about subjectivity and embodiment as poetry’s context; and about how race, gender, class, sexuality, and ability pressurize aesthetic categories.

What does the program offer?

This residency offers space to think, talk, and write about poetry and about the "I" and "we" of poems; about confronting inheritance and tradition with the concomitant aims of justice and revolution for the marginalized. Emphasis will be placed on witness and testimony - with considerations for safety for speakers of difficult truths — as well as politics and cultural criticism as key modalities of today’s poetic impulse. Through faculty talks, online discussions, and one-on-one consultations, residents will concentrate on the writing of poems and the theoretical, embodied, and experiential foundations which make writing possible in the first place.

This 7-day online residency provides thematic teaching from faculty members, Q&A sessions and one-on-one workshopping. 

Instructors will discuss ideas, experiences, and obstacles that participants may be encountering with their writing across genre.

Who should apply? 

Poets who are exploring themes of self and subjectivity in their writing are encouraged to apply. This program is an ideal fit for poets who are exploring identity; the grammar of identity, gender, race, class, sexuality, and ability; the self and the collective; the poetry of the body; poetry as protest and activism against colonialism and the carceral state.

This program welcomes applications from all backgrounds, gender identities, and expressions.

Please note that this program only accepts projects that are being written in English.