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.

ECO SOMATIC POETRY AND PERFORMANCE: In this class we will read and write poems that have absorbed the rhythm, structure, and energy of language as it has been passed through many poetic bodies, from texts to performance art, through time and space. The class is centered around the grounding principle that poetry is a discursive art; meaning, that the poem coming through your body is absorbed from the ecosystem that surrounds you and is changing all the time, as well as language and forms that have been passed through lineage, tradition, ritual, and community. Tyehimba Jess, Akilah Oliver, Anne Waldman, Petra Kuppers, and Joy Harjo will be among the poets who will lead us on this journey.