Department of English

This workshop is, first of all, about writings that are influenced by crossings, borders, and war. But it is also about writing that exceeds the limits of form to arrive at the poetic; when the drive to put down experience in poems spills out into prose (and vice versa), or when the borders of poetic form seem to be incapable of holding or transferring experience into language. Essentially we will explore how writing influenced by borders seeks to occupy space, not in the real sense, but in the abstract—where language and content are always in tension with one another to achieve new forms, or where writing, as one poet and critic puts it “gains distinction not from content, but from what content demands—the renewal of poetic resources.” We will also explore the possibilities of these statements in our own experimentations to achieve form in poetry and prose.