SUPERNATURE

Dates: Six meetings
Format: Videoconference (Zoom)
Cost: Sliding ($300, $400, $500)
Entrance: Submission only (see below); 8 participants maximum

the class:

Let’s begin with nature, or themes that relate to the phenomena of the physical world: plants, animals, microbes, landscape, atmosphere, ecosystems. Conjectural Nature (space, mineral life, the elemental) also. And although nature is generally opposed to what’s human or created by humans, pieces focusing on the pure bodily or on human constructs (like museums or cities, for example) might figure, too.

What’s Supernature, then? The pure creaturely. It’s gender past desire, living with illegible motive. It’s what’s uncanny, opaque by design. Sphinx making her den in a man’s skeleton. Beauty in distortion. Sigils and rituals.

What’s Supernature is mindbody——that union. Above nature, like a condominium? Mysticism, maybe. Exceeding rational understanding, like the psyche or some properties of fungi. The experience of standing beneath a sequoia. Swimming with a turtle in the cold sea. Rushing and throbbing love that dams the senses.

Together we’ll explore what makes the ‘supernatural,’ and how to both (i) address it on its own terms in poems, and (ii) give terms, or form, to our experiences that seem unspeakable. Readings in Jung, Freud, Spretnak, Tennyson, Riding, Adams-Santos, H.D., Kwak, Rimbaud, hooks, Frost, and others.

THE COST

Please pay what pressures yr pocket some, but not enough to break you.

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.

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) by 6/25. Next, wait for our review and reply (by 7/1); 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.