SloPo mini-courses for winter/spring 2026
SloPo season is upon us. There are many ways to be involved with ModPo when we are not in our annual 10-week “Symposium Mode.” You can click HERE and learn of many ways to participate. Just one of these ways is to sign up for a SloPo mini-course.
To enroll in a SloPo mini-course you must fill out THIS FORM.
Here is the list of mini-courses:
Session 1: January 19-28 / Aiden Hunt on Daniel Borzutzky
Session 2: February 16-25 / Dan Bergmann on A.E. Stallings
Session 3: March 23 – April 1 / Kate Colby on giovanni singleton
Session 4: April 13-22 / Jake Marmer on Julia Vinograd
And now here are descriptions:
Session 1: January 19-28 / Aiden Hunt on Daniel Borzutzky
Daniel Borzutzky: Resisting (the) Capital
Description: Focusing on important issues like police misconduct, immigration, and the capitalist excesses of the U.S. government, Daniel Borzutzky’s unconventional poetry captures the troubled times. As the Chilean-American son of immigrants, he brings his experience and keen poetic mind to bear in critiquing and satirizing capitalist exploitation through fragmentary prose poetry. In this mini-course, we’ll look at a sampling from Borzutzky’s four collections since 2016, which include a National Book Award winner and a Griffin Poetry Prize finalist. In addition to forum discussions, there will be one optional Zoom webcast.
Session 2: February 16-25 / Dan Bergmann on A.E. Stallings
Dan Bergmann on A.E. Stallings: The Persistence of Myth
This Slo-Po course will include three zoom meetings at different times to accommodate different time zones (or moods) we will close-read 6 poems by remarkable Oxford Professor of Poetry and MacArthur-winning poet A.E. Stallings. What particularly interests me is the way Greek mythology is so alive for this poet who writes about her everyday experiences.
Session 3: March 23 – April 1 / Kate Colby on giovanni singleton
Kate Colby on giovanni singleton: giovanni singleton’s American Letters: Works on Paper
Contemporary American poet giovanni singleton’s visual poems are cerebral and political, as well as deeply and darkly funny. Using math, iconography and typography, she explores how histories of power and subjugation are built into human—and often specifically American—systems of signification. In this mini course we will engage with visual poems from her 2018 book, American Letters: works on paper, whose very title speaks volumes about her minimalist poems’ linguistic complexity, political engagement, and wryness. There will be two optional Zoom sessions with dates/times TBD.
Session 4: April 13-22 / Jake Marmer on Julia Vinograd
Julia Vinograd: The Sound of Berkeley Streets
In this SloPo session, we’ll explore the work of Julia Vinograd (1943–2018). She was an eccentric and beloved figure in Berkeley, CA, where she sold her own books on street corners and was awarded the Poetry Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004. Dubbed the “Bubble Lady,” she famously appeared at local protests armed with nothing but poems and soap bubbles. Although she published over seventy volumes of poetry, you won’t find her work in the Norton Anthology or on college syllabi; she was essentially a street poet, and her work is soaked with Berkeley street images and rhythms. The course will incorporate a documentary on Julia’s work and will include one Zoom session.
Above: Julia Vinograd
