poetry studio, winter (mmxxv)

6 weeks | Saturdays | 10AM-12:30PM EST
March 1 -  April 12 | $200-$250 (sliding scale**)
9-11 participant capacity
This workshop will take place online.

“Studio” as opposed to “workshop” takes its root from the term “study.” This intensive poetry studio aims to rethink the “student” and “study” along the lines of Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s rethinking of it in The Undercommons: “Study is what you do with other people. It’s talking and walking around with other people, working, dancing, suffering, some irreducible convergence of all three, held under the name of speculative practice.”

They etymology of “student” is from the Old French estudiant "student, scholar, one who is studying." The root of study is early 12c., "to strive toward, devote oneself to, cultivate" (translating Latin occupatur), from Old French estudiier "to study, apply oneself, show zeal for; examine" (13c., Modern French étudier), from Medieval Latin studiare, from Latin studium "study, application," originally "eagerness," from studere "to be diligent," from PIE *(s)teu- (1) "to push, stick, knock, beat" (see steep (adj.)). The notion appears to be "pressing forward, thrusting toward," hence "strive after."

Poetry studio is a space of striving and of zeal. It does not shy away from the pleasure of difficulty. Unlike a traditional workshop, where poets bring in “polished” work to be critiqued, poetry studio takes spontaneity and rigour ardour at its heart--hence, most of the writing is done in real time, and often collaboratively. Poetry studio dehierarchizes the traditional workshop format in that we are all experimenting and risking creativity and improvisation. Whether writing or speaking, we will always already be studying or pushing against limits. 

The studio requires reading, since, in the words of Moten, “writing is part of what it is to be involved in reading.” Authors we will read include the following: 

Myung Mi Kim, from Dura
Hannah Arendt, from The Life of the Mind
Gregory Scofield, from The Gathering
Michel de Montaigne, from Essais
Kama La Mackerel, from Zom-Fam
Valzhyna Mort, from Music for the Dead and Resurrected
+ an old journal entry of yours...

We will discuss difficult concepts. We will take seriously the root of poesis which is making. We want newness. Email if interested: sarah.burgoyne@proton.me

**sliding scale means pay what you can afford with the minimum being $200 (and max $250) if this is too much for you send me an email and we can work something out

*The reading excerpts will all be provided