The Chicago School of Poetics survived the “terrible two’s!” According to WebMD, this is a milestone in our cognitive development, even if it feels like we’re sometimes running out of energy. At age three, kids tend to let their imaginations run absolutely wild, and we’re no different. That’s why you should join us for our current master class with CAConrad on Saturday, October 18! Your writing will absolutely benefit from a jolt of imagination with CAConrad as your guide. Plus, educators get a 20% discount!
Description: Study with CAConrad in this one-day online class, RADICAL INSISTENCE: A (Soma)tic Poetry Workshop. (Soma)tic poetry rituals provide a window into the creative viability of everything around us, initiating an extreme present where we learn how even in crisis we can thrive through the poems, as well as learn to collaborate in unexpected ways with other artistic disciplines. In our Chicago School of Poetics workshop we will take notes together for the poems, but we will also talk about how to always be able to see the poems around us. We will discuss the places that seem to prevent us from writing, and we will build rituals within those very places, because if we can write there we are free to write anywhere, whenever we want. A poetics of autonomy is a poetics of RADICAL INSISTENCE, and it is for all of us.
Class Date: Saturday, October 18, 2014
Time: 1 p.m.– 4 p.m. CST
Duration: 1 day (class meets once, for 3 hrs.)
Instructor: CAConrad
Location: Online
Thanks to all who have helped us reach our mini-milestone!
Here’s a brief Q&A about the School's mission and format with the School’s founder/director, Francesco Levato.
Larry Sawyer: What makes the online instruction at The Chicago School of Poetics so different?
Francesco Levato: I think there are a number of aspects of The Chicago School of Poetics that work toward differentiating our programs. Our instructors are all publishing poets who are also very active in the literary community as editors of literary journals, curators of reading series, and as performers themselves. This allows us to offer our students insight into, and advice for working with, publishers and the larger literary scene. Our video-conferenced classrooms allow students from anywhere to work with instructors they would not otherwise have the chance to work with, and to do this in a face-to-face setting. This system also allows us to provide students with access to poets like Charles Bernstein, Eileen Myles, Pierre Joris, Ron Silliman, and CAConrad, through our Master Class series. We have had students attend these and our regular classes from all over the world. It’s a unique experience to be able to work with a poet like Bernstein from my own home while sharing my work with classmates from Japan, Australia, and Morocco. Also, for what students are getting from the classes, it's much more affordable than instruction found elsewhere. We go beyond critique and allow students to see inside the writing process of the instructors in a truly collaborative environment. We’re happy to be celebrating our three-year anniversary. It's been a team effort.
How have students responded to the classes so far?
The response so far has been great, with students returning regularly for both core courses and master classes. In particular, students have commented on: the breadth of our instructors’ knowledge; the variety of in-class writing exercises and how these are both accessible to newer students and challenging for more experienced poets; on the surprise at, and importance of, being exposed to poets and poetic strategies not usually found in other programs, especially MFA programs; on the collegiality, richness, and depth of discussion with classmates and instructors, and how such has led to rewarding collaborations between students that carry on beyond the classroom; and also on the excitement at being able to participate, from a distance, in performance-based courses like Pulse Poem Pulse where students explore poetry through aural, visual, and musical performances.
How is a typical class structured?
Our instructors design their courses to best suit both the needs of their students and the particular needs of a course’s thematic arc. Because we’re independent we have that flexibility! However, all courses typically include: a combination of short lectures to introduce poets, poetry, and poetic strategies that are unfamiliar to students; readings and discussions to expand on those concepts; writing and/or performance exercises designed to allow students to experiment with those strategies; and in-depth discussion of student poems in a workshop format. Have a look at all of our Fall course offerings by clicking here.
Chicago School of Poetics Core Faculty: Barbara Barg, Kristina Marie Darling, Steve Halle, Francesco Levato, Sharon Mesmer, Larry Sawyer, Laura Skokan
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