Graphic Poetry: Writing at the Edge of Expression

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

In this introductory course, we will approach poetry through its strangest outliers: verbal collages, redacted scripts, typographic messes, and pages strewn with abandoned letters. Focusing on movements in contemporary poetry, we will examine the ways artists visually experiment with words in a strategic refusal to represent the unrepresentable: historical erasure and censorship, environmental extraction, social processes of gendered racialization, and even ecstatic encounters with the divine. We will explore the ways these poems, though apparently nonsensical, not only dramatize historical scenes but also open new paths for interpreting them. Authors will include Douglas Kearney, Susan Howe, M. NourbeSe Philip, Layli Long Soldier, Anne Carson, Asiya Wadud, Nicole Sealey, Emily Dickinson, and others.