Sunday, May 12, 2013

our class description

This is the description that is currently being sent out to parents and prospective participants of our workshop. I hope they find it interesting. I'd take the class, at least:


WIERDNESS AS REBELLION: EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC THROUGH WRITING

This workshop will explore the music of Sun Ra and John Cage through ekphrastic translation.(Ekphrasis is the act of writing through or in response to another art form.) We will encourage each other to investigate weirdness, including our own weirdness, as radical acts of the self. Through procedural, constraint-based writing, we will together invent a new alternative space and time that offers us the ability to embrace difference as a new and hopeful alternative to conformity.

Bio: Ivy Johnson is a poet living and working in Oakland. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Mills College. Her first chapbook, Walt Disney’s Light Show Extravaganza, was published by Boog City in 2011. Her book As They Fall, a collection of fragments published on note cards, was recently published by Timeless, Infinite Light.

Bio: Housten Donham received his B.A. in Literature from the University of Arizona and his M.A. in Literature from Mills College. His scholarly interests have long included modern and contemporary American poetry. He has written on the work of Allen Ginsberg, Robert Grenier, and Rae Armantrout, among other poets. In his spare time he makes digital poetry and writes about horror movies.

2 comments:

  1. How about starting with a quote about rebels or a question? Are you a rebel? You could also show pics or Cage and Sun Ra. It could be an attention grabber. That's my suggestion. Everything else sounds good. Weird people unite! LOL

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  2. I like the sound of this workshop. I never knew the term ekphrastic before, I think it's cool how it sounds like 'ecstatic'. Is there a specific person within that age group you are hoping to work with? Like 13-20 year olds who might not have considered themselves as weird, but through your workshop might recognize their weirdness? How are you/the Public School promoting? I was thinking of doing my workshop there, but it doesn't work with my summer job schedule.

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