CRWR 331 - Special Topics Studio

Advanced Poetry Workshop
The focus of this advanced workshop is to provide an intensive critical forum for students with previous poetry workshop experience to engage deeply with the practice of reading and writing poems. We will work diligently to further the development of each poem/poet, exploring various strategies to generate and extend new work, and giving close consideration to the different formal elements.

Ekphrasis, Allusion, and Literary Citizenship
In this course, we will study poems in the context of poetic tradition and innovation, and consider questions of looking to the literary/visual/multimodal art of others in the context of intent, inspiration and interpretation of literary culture in the context of English-language, multi-lingual, and translated poems across time, with particular emphasis on the texts of contemporary poets and contemporary translation. We will learn about the cultural construction of poetic forms, from encoded oral tradition to poems of survivance and resistance. Students will be expected to write and revise a portfolio of 8-12 pages of a poem or poems over the course of the semester.

Intermediate Poetry Workshop
The focus of this intermediate workshop is to provide an intensive critical forum for students with previous poetry workshop experience to engage deeply with the practice of reading and writing poems. We will work diligently to further the development of each poem/poet, exploring various strategies to generate and extend new work, and giving close consideration to the different formal elements.

Serial & Long Poems
In this course, we will look closely and learn about sequential or serial poems and long poems in contemporary poetry and poetry of the recent contemporary era. We will study revision, develop compositional and generative strategies for allowing poems to be themselves on the page, and experiment with revision and kaleidoscopic poems. Students will be expected to write 8-12 new poems over the course of the semester and radically revise 4-5 poems.

More-than-Human: Poetic Structures and the Lyric
In this course, we will study and observe the ways in which more-than-human subjects (plants, ecosystems, geographies icy/watery/archipelagic and otherwise, animals, and other nonhuman phenomena) inform and emplace poetry. We will read contemporary English-language and other global poetries in translation alongside multimedia poetic forms. Students will be expected to write 8-12 new poems over the course of the semester and radically revise 4-5 poems.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Prerequisite(s): Sophomore standing, CRWR 224, a writing sample of three to five poems, and instructor approval.
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 4 times for credit if different topics.
Notes: Enrollment limited to 15. Not all topics offered every year. Review schedule of classes for availability.
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).