Événement

CAMP LAWLESS

Camp Lawless
June 12th-August 21st Sundays 12-2

With Amy Lawless, the author of two books of poetry including My Dead (Octopus Books, 2013), and co-author of I Cry: The Desire to Be Rejected (Forthcoming from Pioneer Works Press). At Camp Lawless, your primary goal is to develop new poems: a quantity of your own original writing. And like any Summer Camp, you will emerge as a somewhat unrecognizable but more experienced form of yourself. Our generative format will allow you to develop your voices, write voluminously, journal (yes, you may write home!), and scare yourself. This class will be playful, harness the fun of summer sun and Sundays, but it will also be hard work! We will study non-traditional forms, collaboration, ekphrastic writing, elegy, using the self, hybrid, anti-poems, found, nature, formal, conceptual, dreams, Twitter, and more. Class time will be spent on active writing, workshops, experiencing, listening to, and responding to fabulous visitors, a little editing, and you will also practice performing your new work. We will be visited by three amazing working poets, and read poetry, words, and letters from the past and present. Since it's SUMMER, we will take a writing excursion to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as to the sidewalks, parks, and even poetry bookstores of our city for inspiration and writing. We will feel the summer heat, eat pizza, eat watermelon, and write hungrily, constantly, responsibly, and recklessly. The summer will end with a capstone project: a chapbook manuscript! If you're doing it right, you'll cry tears of joy and tears of wild emotion: either way changed and renewed.

Visiting Poets:
Chris Cheney, the author of Lay Me Low (421 Atlanta) and co-author of I Cry: The Desire to Be Rejected (Pioneer Works Press) (Week 3)
Angela Veronica Wong, author of How to Survive a Hotel Fire (date in July TBD)
Simone John, author of the chapbook Collateral and the forthcoming Testify (Octopus Books) (July 24).

Every week we will read cutting-edge, crazy, and curious poetry, words, and letters from the past, present, and the future like John Keats, Vincent Van Gogh, Gaston Bachelard, Yukio Mishima, John Wieners, Mary Ruefle, Fred Moten, Chris Kraus, Rachel B. Glaser, Hilton Als, and more.

Lastly, we will be reading and talking about both John Wieners' book Supplication (Wave Books) and Anne Boyer's Garments Against Women, so please buy or borrow those and be ready to have a conversation about these books on those dates. (We recommend purchasing from Brooklyn bookseller: Berl's Poetry Book Shop).

No refunds or exchanges.