Can we think of form as something other than constraint? What if one’s entire life experience were the constraint, as it is for the Afro-Cuban poet Kamau Brathwaite? And where is the body in this?

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Time: 18:00 to 20:00

Duration: 7 March, 2024

Location: QWF Office—1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC View map

Description

All poets/makers welcome.

Because I have always had many certain problems with form, I consider myself a poet. […] There is no stability of form; all science extols that. Body is an interruption in
another interruptive continuum, and vice versa. The reason to create form might be as a way of charting its fleet malleability. Or perhaps form means morph. I wish.”

—Stacy Doris, “I Have to Check My Email,” (2007)

Can we think of form as something other than constraint? What if one’s entire life experience were the constraint, as it is for the Afro-Cuban poet Kamau Brathwaite? And where is the body in this? This workshop, open to all, entertains a troubled, tentaculur curiosity. Here we’ll consider form in relation to time, to response-ability (Haraway), to force, to seeing-skin. How is form energy, as opposed to shape? Together, we’ll attempt to track its formations in our own works, and in the poetics/poetry of several modern and contemporary writers. Long Soldier, Moten, NourbeSe-Philip, Celan, Stacy Doris, Aisha Sasha John and Lisa Robertson, among others, will be our fellow poeologists

The class work is comprised mainly of group critique of writing you bring in, discussion of texts/videos, and of writing exercises designed to improve technique and explore new approaches to creation.

Questions of composition, rhythm, gesture, engagement with broader social and political values, the body, and others will be considered.

Potential Readings:

Workshop leader

Sarah Burgoyne headshot

Sarah Burgoyne is an experimental poet. Her first collection, Saint Twin (Mansfield: 2016), was a finalist for the QWF’s A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry (2016), won a prize from l'Académie de la vie littéraire (2017) and was shortlisted for a Canadian ReLit Award. She is presently working on a manuscript inspired by Camus’ murderous beach in L'étranger which takes up the relentless heat of the sun and its potential for transference—in this case, from atmosphere to human interaction. Thelma and Louise appear. The sun sings. There is majestic astroturf. Burgoyne also curates a (small) gallery and hosts a reading/performance series in her apartment called Puny Times Gallery.

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