On Saturday afternoons from September 25th through November 6th, I’ll be teaching a Contemporary Practice poetry workshop with Brooklyn Poets.
Here’s the fun trouble we will be getting into. It’s called “Self, Nature, City”:
“All poetry is collaboration,” writes Matthew Rohrer; Allen Grossman writes, “The person who speaks in lyric is always alone.” Poems are simultaneously social and solitary, external and internal. This is especially visible when poets engage directly with their surroundings, whether natural, urban, or both. In this seven-week workshop, we’ll wander, contemplate and imagine—while together and alone—in public parks, forests, deserts, mountains, oceans, wetlands, city streets, aquariums, suburban nature preserves, lands under restoration, regions burned by wildfires, and more, through live online cams and in person via 3–4 outdoor sessions in Prospect Park. We’ll read poets who engage with nature and city-based environments through their lyric ‘I’: Joanne Kyger, Du Fu, Joy Harjo, Larry Eigner, Evie Shockley, Frank O’Hara, Dg Nanouk Okpik, Patricia Killelea, Geoffrey Nutter and more. Along the way, we’ll question the boundaries of nature and city and consider what it means to write in collaboration with nature as non-human species populations decline in this climate emergency. At the same time, we’ll honor the persistent motivation of the poet to speak into and out of everything, no matter what the time period or current conditions may be. Class sessions will meet synchronously via Zoom every Saturday, save for in-person sessions in Prospect Park for local students (remote students can Zoom in for these sessions). Assignments, poems and critiques will be shared via Wet Ink. [Note: as this workshop intends to meet partially in person, all local participants must show proof of vaccination before the first session.]
You can read a bit more about it here, and even register to join us, if this calls to you.
Emily Wallis Hughes 