Department of English

Novelist Gabriel García Márquez said, “Everyone has three lives, a public life, a private life and a secret life.” This is a workshop for students who are interested in exploring how poets nurture, flex, and merge their public, private, and secret lives through writing, performance, civic engagement, and activism. In addition to discussing the poet’s changing role in society through the essays of Aimé Césaire, Muriel Rukeyser, and June Jordan as well as the work of inaugural poets and poets laureate, we will study contemporary poets whose work lives both on and off the page, including Ross Gay (a gardener), Iréne Mathieu (a pediatrician), and Ursula Rucker (a recording artist). Students will encounter a diverse series of both written and audiovisual texts, weekly writing assignments that include poems and responses to the readings, and in-class activities that stretch your imaginative and collaborative abilities.