SloPo 2022: five ModPo mini-courses now open for enrollment!
We are delighted to announce five new SloPo mini-courses for the ModPo off-season (the first months of 2022). As with all ModPo offerings, these are free (no charge whatsoever) and open to anyone.
You only need to be already enrolled in ModPo. If you are not currently enrolled, click HERE to do so.
To participate, please send an email to modpo@writing.upenn.edu. Provide your name, your email address, and state which of the SloPo groups you wish to join. (To emphasize: you must tell us which group or groups you want to join or we are unable to add you to the list[s].)
The discussions will take place in the ModPo discussion forum—specifically in SloPo subforums set up for each of the groups. Of course these are asynchronous discussions. Each group will also host at least one live Zoom session (obviously optional, since it will difficult for some participants to join live).
We welcome other SloPo season discussions. Several are already happening. To find one of these SloPo discussions, go HERE to the SloPo forum.
SloPo 2022 – five ModPo mini-courses
GROUP 1 — January 21-31, led by Al Filreis: “Selected works of Caroline Bergvall”
Bergvall has been featured in both the main ModPo syllabus and in ModPoPLUS. Now, as we prepare to welcome her as a Kelly Writers House Fellow on March 28 & 29, 2022, we take ten days to discuss a small representative selection of her work. For our discussions we will use a ModPo discussion subforum. Participants can optionally join one or two live Zoom sessions too.
GROUP 2 — Februrary 15-25, led by Jake Marmer: “Poetry of Border Crossings”
In this SloPo gathering, we’ll read poems that touch on the immigration experience, multilingualism, and (self-)translation. We’ll have a ModPo discussion subforum going and will come together for a Zoom meeting, too.
GROUP 3 — March 15-25, led by Jason Zuzga: “The Poetry of Jack Spicer”
“Live moons, Live lemons, live boys in bathing suits. The poem is a collage of the real…Things do not connect, they correspond. That is what makes it possible for a poet to translate real objects, to bring them across language as easily as he can bring them across time.”–Jack Spicer Spicer, central to “The San Francisco Rennaissance,” claimed to receive–like a radio–transmissions of poems from elsewhere, such as Mars. What are we to make of such claims; how might they inflect these poems, especially given other comments of his of a more tender sort such as in the quotation above? We will pay especially close attention to his 1957 book After Lorca, a collection of letters to and ostensible translations of the deceased Federico Garcia Lorca’s poetry. We will sample Spicer’s work bit by bit, day by day, ongoingly active in our own ModPo subforum forum and active as a group in real-time on Zoom each Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday. Multiple global time zones will be accommodated, and there will be additional opportunities for one on one conversations with the instructor via text and Zoom.
GROUP 4 — April 15-May 2, led by Mandana Chaffa: “Contemporary 21st Century Poetry: A Consideration of Poets and Poems from the New Millenium”
Would you like to talk about contemporary poetry during Poetry Month? Join us for an exciting two-week conversation about a range of contemporary poems and poetic trends. Poets under consideration might include: Kaveh Akbar, Fiona Benson, Leila Chatti, Devon Figueroa-Walker, Major Jackson, Ilya Kaminsky, Natalie Shapero, Solmaz Sharif, Tracy K. Smith, Divya Victor and more! We will use our own ModPo subforum for discussion, and we will also conduct brief live Poem Chats over Zoom.
GROUP 5 — May 15-25, led by Kate Colby: “The Poetry of George Oppen”
In this course we’ll read a selection of poems from throughout Oppen’s career including “Discrete Series” and later poems. We will discuss Oppen’s poetry in our own ModPo discussion subforum and in one Zoom meeting.
