ECOSOMATIC POETRY AND POETICS: In this class you will compose a long poem and/or chapbook of poems which reflect the rhythm, structure, and energy of language as you observe, encounter, read, and resist. Your languaging body writes from the ecosystem that surrounds you including your physical and mental experiences, fluctuations in the natural world, events in the political and social realm; and it is changing all the time. Aside from reading and commenting on the work of others in the class, you will spend classtime reading, writing, and thinking about language as an ecosomatic experience of changing forms that have been passed through lineage, tradition, ritual, and community. Akilah Oliver, Anne Waldman, Dannielle Vogel, and Tyrone Williams will be among the poets who will guide you on this journey.

This advanced poetry writing workshop will focus on the asking of questions (and uncertainty, ambiguity, mystery) as a wellspring of poetic energy. Every week we will create new and curious work, cultivate the sustainable generative practices to keep that new work innovative and formally exciting (for both yourself and your audience), and exchange meaningful craft-driven feedback in a community. This course will help you to substantially grow your overall body of work in preparation for the Senior Seminar experience in your graduation semester. Together we’ll figure out what revision can do for our existing projects, how to engage and employ the techniques of other poets that we admire, and how to write the most impactful poem possible at this moment in our lives, one that asks questions worth living inside. Students should be prepared to challenge their own aesthetics and experiences in poetry through the readings, assignments, prompts, and workshop process. Must be enrolled in one of the following Classifications: Junior, Fifth Year, or Senior. Pre-req of LLSW 3520 Intermediate Poetry minimum grade of C.