Department of English

When writers read great writing, they want to write. Leslie Scalapino was a poet’s poet, a writer’s writer, who defied genre and shaped new forms to contain her concerns as poetry, memoir, drama, cinema and criticism. This workshop takes the wonder of her art as inspiration. More than that, it takes seriously the idea of a writer — a woman writer, never spoken of in the same sentence as, say, William Carlos Williams, as a key influencer of contemporary US poetry — who changes the whole landscape of what is being written around and after their work. What on earth was she doing? Can we try it? Weekly writing assignments/prompts will focus on exploring forms and operations we identify in our readings. This course is open to graduate students in English as an independent study. Graduate students enrolled in the course will also write a short final paper.