SloPo courses for winter/spring 2023

Once again, we at ModPo are pleased to roster several SloPo (off-season) mini-courses. Anyone enrolled in ModPo is eligible to participate. (If you are not currently enrolled in ModPo, go HERE.)

To enroll in SloPo mini-courses listed below, click THIS LINK.

SloPo courses – winter and spring 2023

SESSION #1 – January 6 – 20, 2023 — Al Filreis on Joan Retallack 

Writing as poethics.

We will read and discuss a selection of poems and other writings of Joan Retallack. Our discussions will take place primarily in online discussion forums. In addition we will schedule two optional Zoom sessions.

SESSION #2 – February 13 -22, 2023 — Kate Colby on Lorine Niedecker 

Reading Lorine Niedecker’s Calendar Poem(s)  

In this mini course we will read Lorine Niedecker’s poem series “Next Year or I Fly My Rounds, Tempestuous” in its entirety. Unpublished in Niedecker’s lifetime and only rediscovered in the 1990s, the handwritten series was pasted onto pages of a 1935 pocket calendar and hand-bound as a gift to Louis Zukofsky. Exhibiting Niedecker’s trademark brevity and “condensery,” the lines work with and against standard notations of time, inviting the reader to “Wade all life / backward to its / source which / runs too far / ahead.” Over twelve days we will discuss this abstract, intriguing, highly self-reflexive poem series and its relationship to physical and metaphysical effects of time. This group will primary have discussions in the ModPo forums, but there will also be two optional hour-long Zoom discussions sessions convening on Thursday, 2/16 and Monday, 2/20 (time TBD).  

SESSION #3 – March 13 – 22 — Irene Torra Mohedano on Alejandra Pizarnik 

Alejandra Pizarnik: You write poems because you need a place where what isn’t may be. 

Can we hide in language? Can we use language to say the unsayable? What is it that cannot be said?  In this mini-course we will encounter the poet Alejandra Pizarnik (Buenos Aires, 1936-1972) and we will discuss a selection of poems in which language condenses, meanings hide, and the poet’s fight to speak makes us question the relationship between words and silence. In addition to discussion in the ModPo forums, this SloPo group will meet on Zoom on Saturday 18th March 2023 at 10 am EST.  

SESSION #4 – April 24-May 3  – Jake Marmer on Hank Lazer 

Hank Lazer’s Poetry: Experiments and Rituals 

We’ll spend 10 days reading poems by this inventive, versatile, and prolific contemporary poet, Hank Lazer. Special attention will be given to his shape-poems — hand-written improvisations that freely move across the surface of the page. In Lazer’s work, spirituality meets humor, and philosophical quests meet everyday life: dogs, conversations, walks, and so much more. In addition to ModPo forum discussions, there will be two Zoom conversations, and Hank himself will join us for the second session to read, hang, and converse.  

SESSION #5 – April 6 – 15 – Amber Rose Johnson on Harryette Mullen

Amber Rose will offer a SloPo course this spring—the fifth SloPo course we’re offering this season. This course is titled “Slippery Syllables, Lucid Lines: Exploring Harryette Mullen’s Poetic Experiments.” Here’s the course description: “In this mini-course, we will become bedmates with Harryette Mullen’s curious and inventive collection, Sleeping with the Dictionary. In Mullen’s work, language is a material to play with and meaning is up for grabs. Following her lead, we will conduct a few poetic experiments of our own. We will have two option hour-long zoom discussions.” To enroll, please click HERE and fill out the form.