BFA in Creative WritingResidency Workshops and PresentationsRecent Faculty Residency WorkshopsHaiti: ReThinking Poverty & Deals With the Devil, with faculty member Pamela S. BookerWith the recent tragic events that have disrupted our families and friends of Haiti, it is more imperative that we navigate the currents of this unregulated space with them, but with the awareness of a nation that has a longstanding Historical tradition of activist response and resilience, even when confronted by fundamentalist tirades that blame the victim. Through screenings of interviews with historians, politicians, artists and activists, we will examine the contemporary priorities and injustices that dog Haiti and its descendants with poverty, inconsistent governance and, if you were to believe it, “deals with the devil,” that contribute to its seeming Darwinian punishment. Featured are noted Haitians/Haitian-Americans to include: Ambassador Raymond Joseph, author Edwidge Danticat, drag illusionist MilDred Gerestant, along with social thinkers who offer inspiring and controversial critical formations while imagining recovery and a future for our vital global neighbor. He has been called the perfect metaphor for our racially tumultuous time, the child of a black Kenyan and white Kansan, an Ivy-educated visionary who cut his political teeth on the streets of Chicago, a hoop-shooting, tie-shunning, BlackBerry-wielding Democratic presidential candidate who has electrified voters of every stripe in campaign speeches across the country, a multicultural rock star who has riveted throngs of Obamaniacs around the world. His run for the White House has also exposed an array of ideological fault lines in America, most wrenchingly within the African-American community itself. In this workshop, we will explore Barack Obama as a cultural phenomenon, assessing whether and how he has brought about a “post-race” moment in America that might enable the country to emerge from the nightmare of its tortured racial history. “Faced with the white page,” writers often feel lost, overwhelmed, taunted. “Faced with the white page,” writers often feel grounded, focused, alive. In this workshop, Walter Butts & Metta Sama will discuss the great benefits of feeling daunted by the white page and the great challenges to believing that one is the master of the white page, and some vice versa and multiplication and dance-division of the same. Walter will begin with a discussion of how the compilation of seemingly disparate events and experiences embedded in our memory might culminate in a poetry of discovery and surprise. Through handouts and writing exercises, we will experiment with association, juxtaposition, and word choice as techniques to empower “otherness.” Then Metta will talk about how the line (and its break) and rhythm can help determine the purpose and thrust of the “walking breath.” This will be an “active engagement” workshop, in which you will benefit greatly from reading a selection of pre-selected essays prior to attending. We will also spend quite a bit of time doing exercises and a short bit of time working through revision. So please bring one poem you’d like to revise, as well as pen and pad. Poetry and film share similar aspects of image and composition. We’ll examine the metaphorical language of cinematic imagery, as it’s evoked in the films of Fritz Lang, Jean Cocteau, Orson Welles, and others. We’ll discuss modes of European expressionism, film noir, and new wave cinema and their relationship to poetry. We’ll consider the poem within the context of cinematic terminology and technique, and explore how such devices as the cross-cut, jump-cut, point-of-view, and flashback/flashforward might be employed in the crafting of a poem. Finally, we’ll read selections inspired by films from such poets as Hart Crane, Frank O’Hara, and Adrienne Rich. This workshop is an Advanced Genre Workshop designed to encourage close reading and specific techniques for reading as a writer, as well as engaging methodologies for reading across cultures. We will read texts by politically-activated writers who incorporate research and documentary materials into their work. We will consider a range of ethical, political and practical questions raised by research methods, reportage, quoting, citation and appropriation, in works that address complex and difficult narratives, from war and interpersonal violence to histories of place and language acquisition. This workshop contemplates a range of poetic forms, from free verse to prose poems and hybrid texts. Readings will include Heimrad Baecker, Kamau Brathwaite, Semezdin Mehmedinović, Kristin Palm, Charles Reznikoff, and Padcha Tuntha-Obas. This workshop works toward fulfilling the following BFA curriculum requirements: Development of Craft and Reading Across Cultures. How do we listen so as to hear most accurately, most imaginatively, with the broadest perceptive horizons and the most finely-tuned sensory focus? How do we acknowledge and enact listening as an interpretive, participatory and conscious action? How do we translate our impressions of what we hear in the world around us into works that directly engage a response to the sonic and spoken textures of our surroundings? How might the act of listening place our creative work—whether audio or visual, textual or performative—in constructive dialogue with the many voices engaged in conversation about what matters most in our particular contexts? Using the ideas of listening and response as fundamental conceptual frameworks, we will examine works of music, sound and writing to explore how some thinkers and artists reflect an astute attention to listening, and in turn activate our own capacity to hear deeply, differently, provocatively. This workshop is appropriate for anyone, but might especially interest writers, musicians, researchers, educators, ecologists, sound artists, visual artists, scholars and activists who have an avid interest in making creative and critical work that directly responds to what is heard—in the most expansive sense of the term—in the world around us. This workshop is about using photos, moving images, and "documentary poetics" (often found text) to make art, investigate a research question, document your learning, and communicate with an audience. We will look at examples of photo stories, short films, slideshows, and documentary poems/prose works. It's been said that art took a "documentary turn" in the last couple decades--why is this so? Why are documentary forms so compelling and popular? Some theoretical questions on point of view, the ethics, and the politics of the documentary impulse and practice will be discussed. A good workshop for thinking about ways to document your learning in everything from visual art to writing to social science to thoughtful action. Also a good workshop for expanding your study plan reading/viewing lists. This is a workshop for anyone who would like to improve upon his or her abilities to revise. No matter your formal leanings—prose, fiction, poetry, inter-genre— Questions of ethnicity fascinate me: what makes an ethnic group, & how does one create a culture from an ethnic space & transcribe that onto a white page? Is there a queer poetics/writing; is there a black poetics/writing; is there a female poetics/writing, is there a male poetics/writing? We’ll take a look at some fairly experimental texts in which the authors themselves argue that they’re writing cultural texts, feminists, authors of color, financially impoverished, etc. A short reading list, including some work from Rey Chow, Ferdinad de Sausurre, & N’gugi wa Thiongo’o. We’ll view video of dancers and musicians, & if time permits, we’ll look at some primitivist and cubist visual art, in order to get at some well-grounded and well-rounded perspectives. Recent Workshops Offered by StudentsHow Do Our Relationships To Land And Nation Define Our Identities? with graduating student Monica GomeryHow do our relationships to land and nation define our identities? How is memory both transmitted and distorted through language and family lore? What can poetry teach us about approaching these questions? Gomery will read from her senior project, a manuscript of poetry exploring family, migration and language. This presentation will involve a group writing exercise, so please bring something to write with and an open mind... A learned friend said, brave women write plotless narratives. The Modernist Virginia Woolf made a similar argument in 1925. "...if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must...then there would be no plot." Life is not plotted. Literature is representative of life. Is plot necessary? Bring your vision, (and examples), for a specifically 21st century narrative, to a passionate discussion on writing beyond Recent Publishing & Writing Group Study OfferingsGoing Public: Lo-Fi Publishing Projects in Non-Traditional Venues, with faculty member Jen HoferPart of being a writer or artist is active participation in contemporary conversations relevant to our work, within a range of (usually overlapping) communities. One way to begin “going public” is to self-publish and/or publish others’ work through lo-fi, inexpensive, on-the-ground autonomous micro-publishing projects. In two sessions, we will brainstorm non-traditional forms and venues for public manifestations of creative work and create a plan of action for this group study. Over the course of the semester, each student will be expected to conceive, create and distribute at least one project during the group study. Scheduling specifics will be planned as a group, at the Residency. |