LIMPIDITY & FLUX

Dates: Eight winter meetings: 12/29, 1/4, 1/5, 1/11, 1/12, 1/18, 1/19, 1/26
Format: Videoconference (Zoom)
Cost: $375
Entrance: Submission only (see below); 8 participants maximum

the class:

The life-force in poems——as tacitly understood in the West——involves what Brock-Broido calls ‘violent concision and transformation.’ The charge has immanence; even what’s narrative bends, somehow, to demands for moment-by-moment electricity.

Without coming to conclusions, we can at least posit: our lives, the texts we write, elide; they transition, lose and gain temperature, recede as often as they assert. What do poems that give primacy to such limpidity & flux look like? And can we learn to appreciate and compose texts that are custodian to limina, not charge?

Expect specific address of the very fine movements; clock-parts; enjambment, line length, sound, space, mise en scène; attenuation; vanishing. And, outside traditional workshopping, live writing-meditations, exercises bent on ‘impression.’

François Jullien’s Vital Nourishment will be a touchstone. Other cross-disciplinary influences will be the scenic in Silent Hill 2; 2-D design concepts; minimalist scores by Satie, Shimomura, Glass; & text by Kim, H.D., Lispector, Wolfe, Woolf, Robbe-Grillet, Blanchot, Bataille, Gander, Zhuangzi.

Note: this is a study-, community- and writing-intensive course; expect 7-10 hours of dedicated writing, reading, critique, and workshops per week.

GENRES

Poems, prose, or hybrids; genre is a marker of convenience and cannot define our interest in text that is frightfully alive.

WHAT YOU’LL PRODUCE

Three (or more) new or seriously revised pieces.

WHAT YOU’LL RECEIVE

Earnest critique, community, and investment in your writing.

WORKSHOP LOGISTICS

Sessions generally run 2-3 hours in the evening, beginning at 7 EST. Optional (recommended) reading groups in place, too.

HOW DO I SIGN UP?

First, submit 3-5 pages of your ‘best’ writing (the writing you think best represents your aspirations) to our Submittable (free of charge). Next, wait for our review and reply; if you’re selected, we’ll send along preliminary readings, links, and payment options.

THE TEACHING ARTISTS:

Joseph Spece read English and philosophy at Boston College, and took his MFA from Columbia University. His books are BAD ZOO (FATHOM 2018) and Roads (Cherry Grove 2013); periodical credits include Poetry, DIAGRAM, Volt, AGNI, datableedzine, 3:AM, TriQuarterly, Fond, Salamander, Berfrois, and Best American Experimental Writing, with cross-genre editorial and reader credits at Narrative, Noble/Gas Quarterly, and The Paris Review. His public honors in writing include a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, artist fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Corrente Prize in Poetry from Columbia University. He is founding editor at FATHOMBOOKS, a micropress with special interest in women writers and queers; he splits time between Wellesley and Provincetown, MA.

Eric Westerlind is a writer, editor, and graphic designer. He's worked alongside Joseph at SHARKPACK Poetry Review, her periodical SPR Annual, and on the design front at FATHOMBOOKS. Prior to that, he co-founded and edited The Bacon Review with Jason Barry, which segued into professional editing as a service. He's operated EW & I Design since 2010; works actively with Clawfoot Press as editor, contributor, and designer; records two podcasts on writing and reading, The Nudge and Powerhouse; publishes stories and poems to friends and family and ever-so infrequently to presses; has a degree, is wickedly rent-free, loves crackers, and is nearly done with his first novel, UGO: A Pilgrimage, which has taken longer than anticipated, but no longer than many other books.