How can a poem be a historical or personal document? Or, is a collection of poetry an archive? This workshop- and reading- group will build on the practice of writing and reading poetry through an exploration of contemporary documentary and speculative practices. If language is the material of writing, we will read and write with an attention to how this material (or non-material) is sculpted, folded, plucked, crumpled, erased and sung. Through in-class and out-of-class writing prompts, we will engage prolifically in both ‘process- and ‘project-based’ orientations towards our writing. Considering the poet as sculptor, collector, censor, documentarian, translator, archaeologist, and psychic, we will determine what the act of writing symbolizes for ourselves; we will attend to the properties of our emerging materials and methods. By the end of this course, students will have 'written' a collection of poetry that pulls from their personal archives and surroundings as matter for potentization. We'll begin by reading Susan Howe's Spontaneous Particulars: The Telepathy of Archives. Others to be read in this course may include Yi Sang, Rachel Mannheimer, Afrizal Malna, Monica de la Torre, Maxe Crandall, Inger Christensen, Dolores Dorantes and Suzan-Lori Parks.
Students of all educational backgrounds and professions are welcome; anyone with a serious interest in involving themselves in a writing practice is encouraged to join.
The workshop will culminate with a public reading at a.p.
12 Sept.
19 Sept.
26 Sept
10 Oct
17 Oct
24 Oct
7 Nov
14 Nov
25 Nov Public Reading
Class fee:
175€ Scholarships offered on a need-based basis (no one will be turned away).
Zoe Darsee (M.F.A., University of Notre Dame) is a poet, publisher and teacher based in Berlin. Alongside Nat Marcus, they are the co-founder and editor of TABLOID press. Darsee has facilitated poetry workshops in various arrangements of community since 2015, in addition to teaching undergraduate poetry courses at the University of Notre Dame. They are the author of BELL LOGIC (Spiral Editions, 2022) and Anzündkind (The Creative Writing Department, 2023). A short story, titled Efflorescence in Stucco (2023), is recently out from Earthbound Press. More at zoedarsee.com.
Register at hallo@a-p.berlin