Department of English

This workshop will take a hybrid approach to reading and writing poetry and fiction: we will experiment with admixtures of poetry, prose (including the personal essay and short fiction), and visual and aural language art.

When our critical and aesthetic objectives are manifold, and outreach conventional usage, we get crafty, we improvise, and we hybridize our strategies. Rosmarie Waldrop writes about collage in terms of text and texture: language is material. Erín Moure writes about revealing the seams in language to challenge the borders inherent to conventional writing structures. M. NourbeSe Philip writes about pushing the boundaries of language, revealing hidden agendas embedded in linguistic structures. In the spirit of these tactile engagements with writing, we will practice a poetics of collage at the level of form. As we explore shifting grounds between poetry, prose, and image, we will practice moving between them and splicing their logics. If we discover new ways to write, perhaps we can discover new things to say, and even new ways of being in the world.