Dear All,
Welcome! I’m very excited to get started, to co-learn with you in ways that matter–matter to you, to us, and more broadly. This course, as part of the Experiments in Text series, will be primarily a creative writing course, and yet like past courses, look at some specific aspects of the interchange between what is often thought of as “creative writing” and “pedagogy,” “pedagogy” and “politics.” In so doing I hope that we’ll get outside our givens–the identities we carry with us, that are comfortable to wear. Unlike the full programs that I teach (or co-teach), this one is 4 credits. I understand that many of you have a full course load and/or a full workload outside of school, perhaps children or perhaps coming in from afar. So we’ll be mindful of this as we try to apprehend this part of the social-poetic landscape: how the examination of and re-tooling of pedagogy might effect our politics, and conversely–and how the pivot point or bridge that might help us understand this movement, in fact might drive this movement, can be, among other things, our “poetics,” the very writing we do, how we do it and why. How do these movements make for an emergent activism? In what ways can we re-imagine public artistic interventions such as PRESS, for example, the series, conference, etc that brings artists to campus as well as sponsors student events/work?
This course will have three basic components beyond the 1 day of lecture (Weds) and 1 day of seminar/language lab (Sat). These are:
1) Readings: each week we’ll read at least 1 short piece of “creative” writing and one short piece of “critical” writing–works not by one of us. As we go along these terms will hopefully complicate themselves by way of our readings. Hopefully we’ll come to each piece with a loving and a critical eye. Our readings will always be short, and when there are more than 2, which during some weeks there will be, they will be very short. Short and difficult, most often contemporary. I expect all to have completed these readings in time for lecture, every Weds–before that day’s class. That way we can have interactive lectures. THERE ARE NO BOOKS for this course. For 4 credit courses I rely on works available in the public domain, available online or as pdf. So all readings will be either sent to you as link or as pdf. ALL READINGS WILL BE AVAILABLE HERE ON THE BLOG as link or download, so PLEASE VISIT THIS BLOG EACH WEEK FOR THE READINGS. I will alert you to any pdfs, for example, that will not appear here due to file size. These will only be sent via email. But by and large all readings will be available in your inboxes each week and on the blog each week. The blog is our backup system for those of you who have not yet activated your evergreen email accounts. Please do so.
2) Writing. Each of you will be producing individual creative writing portfolios, as responses often to the week’s events, and each of you will work in a small group, thus producing collaborative writing. As the group work intensifies from week 5 onward, readings will diminish in favor of reading one-another’s work. Poety, prose, performance writing–will all be on the table. These terms, again, will hopefully complicate themselves as we “critique” (or as I prefer “closely read”) one another’s work. You’ll get feedback on your writing from me as well.
3) Group Work: Insurrections. In small groups we’re going to actively re-imagine and create anew a pedagogical-poetic commons, small places of swarming activity that torques pedagogical models, specifically as relates to text arts, and does so in a way that has a poetics, a politics, and importantly will serve as bridge between ourselves and the wider campus, the wider Olympia area. The question is this: as a small group of individuals, how can you (and how will you) use various enactments of language as new pedagogy, as political gesture, or as community forming practice, one that is open to those beyond our class, and that reinvisions the terms under which we are initially gathering (“politics,” “pedagogy,” and “writing”)? Your group work can take the form of a small course; it can be a performance; a collective. I am not interested in dictating to you what your small group will create other than to say that we’ll look at models from weeks 1-4 that will give us ideas and places to perhaps start; that the rest of us be involved somehow as participants in your insurrection; that I’d love for our work to feed into and refashion PRESS, which is really only the name for an open-ended set of events related to text arts; and I’m going to expect that whatever you come up with, it shows thoughtfulness and work put in appropriate for a 4 credit course. This last part means: not too little, not so much that what you want to do is impossible to do. More on this work, on what I mean here and how groups will form, etc (all logistics) to come later. I’ll also go over the group work of the course in depth with you in class. So don’t worry about this work now. And if it seems like too much, realize that you are probably utilizing your whole imagination here, thinking big, which is wonderful but obviously it’s you doing that to yourself, not the assigned work itself! I’ll be there to continually ask you: are you biting off more than you can chew here? Do you REALLY want to do that? Etc. My role here will be sounding board, facilitator, aid.
COVENANT: simply, and to put it out there rather overtly, as someone with Marxist-anarchist leanings, I do not find it particularly ethical to tell you how you should treat one another or what is expected of you as human creatures. Rather, it should just go without saying that mutual respect, in the form of active interest in one-another’s commonalities and differences, alongside LISTENING to one-another and respecting one-another’s desire to be treated in the way that is articulated, is urgently necessary for us to form a coterie, a community of co-creators. If any of you would like to draw up a covenant, I’m open to it. Also, if any of you would like to add something here as part of a “working covenant” I would be very interested in that, and will put it here. We can, on an ongoing basis, and as things arise, put items here, reminders, etc., to refer to viz. the working covenant.
PRESS: besides being re-tooled by some of you, perhaps, there will be at least 1 mandatory PRESS event, Rachel Zolf’s reading/discussion on October 17. It will likely take place at 7pm. Other events will likely be optional. The first, highly recommended, is Debrah Morkun, tomorrow, Sept 27, at 7pm in B1105, Sem II. Please try to join us. It will be an excellent beginning to what I expect will be an excellent quarter.
For now these are the logistical items related to our course. I’ll be posting another item, that of this week’s reading, in a few minutes. Both of these posts will be sent to you as emails. Really looking forward to working and getting to know each of you!
In Solidarity,
David Wolach