LEVEL & GENRE: All Levels / All Genres
HOW MUCH: $125 for two classes
MEMBER DISCOUNT: $100 for two classes
CLASS SIZE: 12 maximum
In reference to Robert Rauschenberg's Erased de Kooning Drawing 1953, the American painter, sculptor, and printmaker Jasper Johns used the term "additive subtraction." Using this concept of additive subtraction applied to text, this course will consider how erasure texts serve to address, challenge, mock, disrupt, highlight, abstract, and bring into sharper focus or contrast, the sociopolitical realities that define our lives. What makes a successful erasure poem? What visual and spatial considerations go into making a work of erasure, and how do we begin to approach it? How have erasurists used the form to redress other erasures—of marginalized & colonized peoples, of history, of the current moment in the necropolitic of white supremacy?
In this two-day workshop, we will consider some of these questions, work on drafting two erasure/found poems from prompts, and give and receive feedback on work generated. We will ground our analysis in the work of writers Candace Williams, Chase Berggrun, Jordan Abel, M. NourbeSe Philip, and Srikanth Reddy, among others. In addition, we will discuss works by visual artists Ken Gonzales-Day, Jesse Chun, Jennif(f)er Tamayo, Jenny Holzer, and Titus Kaphar.
Mariam Bazeed [they/them] is an Egyptian immigrant, writer, performer, spoken word artist, and cook living in a rent-stabilized apartment in Brooklyn. An alliteration-leaning writer of prose, poetry, plays, and personal essays, Mariam received their MFA in Fiction from Hunter College. Their work in poetry and prose has been published by Oberon Books, Saqi Books, the Evergreen Review, and the Margins, among others, and their plays have been performed in festivals in the US and abroad.
Mariam is currently at work on a new play commission, Kilo Batra: In Death More Radiant [working title], in collaboration with poet Kamelya Omayma Youssef, scheduled to premiere in 2021 at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
*Paragraph Online members get a discount on this workshop. Become a Paragraph Member today.