Writing Poetry During the Apocalypse (2-part)

Class Description

Have you heard the news? It's awful. Sometimes it feels like we're living through a succession or cluster of apocalypses, staggered, overlapping, resonating, each moving at their own scale and speed, and also combining, networking, consolidating momentum and pace. The speed of viral contagion and the speed of viral marketing, the speed of wildfire, of greenhouse gas emission, of bullets, of deepfakes, of icemelt, of the founding of new fascist militias, of urban warfare, of Supreme Court decisions, of gentrification, of hypersonic railgun projectiles, of soil erosion, of the bioaccumulation of microplastics, of and of and on and on.

How do we wring meaning from these disasters?

We write it. This has always been the role of poetry: this lovely hubris at every end of the world; this urge to connect the bad (dis-) stars (aster) into constellations of human hope and human desire and human love. To find revelation in apocalypse. In this two-day, six-hour seminar, we will attempt to get poems from the news. On the first day, we'll read poems from Mosab Abu Toha, Noor Hindi, Kim Hyesoon, John Milton, Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Bishop, and Joy Harjo, alongside a series of linked generative prompts, to help us find poetic forms through which we can speak grief, devastation, fear, uncertainty, anxiety, and loss: little arks to carry us through the flood. On the second day, we'll workshop the poems that we produce. We aim to dismantle the “silent writer” model of workshop. Your voice is important; we’ll be centering your concerns and your intent in discussion.

Writers of all levels welcome.

Class Format

This class will take place using Zoom videoconferencing. About 15 minutes before your class is scheduled to begin, you'll receive an email from your instructor with a link to join the class meeting!

Scholarship Information

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