This generative workshop offers students at all levels the chance to hone their writing skills and explore poetry’s formal possibilities while delving into the expansive field of documentary poetics: making literary art in and of experience as shaped by the efforts to perceive and record. What do we notice and what do we make of it? What matters to us and why? The act of documenting is always creative and critical, based on our lived value systems. We will also investigate how poets use documents and other means to reframe and re-contextualize subjects often considered outside the scope of poetry. Documentary film, photography, and visual art will point toward other nontraditional approaches to archival and living material, and will provide a foundation for the ethics of documental art. Students will be writing and researching topics of their choice throughout the semester to create a chapbook-length work of documentary poetry.Literary Forms courses are designed for Writing and Literature Majors and Minors and are focused on a specific genre, medium, form, or technique specific to their disciplines. Lit Forms courses might focus on a genre (fiction, SF, poetry, CNF, etc.) or might focus on a technique (i.e. dialogue, character, setting, image, research). Literary Forms classes explore similarities and differences across mediums and genres, involve reading and writing, and multi-modal approaches to critical inquiry including creative responses. Literary Forms courses typically balance seminar and workshop activities.

Visit Workday to view this information.