English 816-001
Seminar in Poetry Writing: Eye, Image Maker
Instr: Kilwein-Guevara, Maurice
Office: CRT 512; 229-4520
e-mail: maurice@uwm.edu
Office hours:
Course Information: W; 3:30-6:10pm; CRT 468
Course Description
What I have in my mind's eye is a writing class in which about six weeks will be devoted to collaborative and individual projects that combine elements of the visual arts and poetry-making. This first part of the class will be inter-artistic. I am planning at least one evening's collaboration with Raoul Deal's (from the Art Department) installation class. I'm also planning on a unit exploring the relationship of film to poetry, and on opening up the class to collaborative projects that may include installation art, computer-based production, drawing, graphic art, video, performance art, collage, painting, photography, fabric/textile art, etc. I assume the students do not necessarily come into the class with any special talents or skills in the visual arts; I do, however, assume that students enter the class with an exploratory disposition and will want to chart the relationship between their own poetry and the visual arts. I assume you are serious about writing poetry. We will surely read Johanna Drucker excellent essay entitled "Visual Performance of the Poetic Text" from Charles Bernstein's Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word. The other nine weeks of the course will be more conventional, involving the composition and class discussion of individual poems by class members. I will argument some classes with short writing exercises and by sharing poems and other texts. All poetry for the semester should foreground the primacy of the image in poetic composition. I'm anticipating we will develop a very interesting, creative, supportive artistic community.
