“SloPo” mini-courses, winter/spring 2027
We are please to announce the slate of SloPo mini-courses rostered for winter and spring 2027. HERE is the link for registering. Once you register you should look for any email notes the leader will be sending you. But in any case—regardless of email correspondence—be sure to visit the special “SloPo” discussion forum for new subforums and threads about these discussions. HERE is the SloPo forum.
Meantime, again, please register by clicking HERE.
Session 1: January 18-27
Jordan Trice on M. NourbeSe Philip
M. NourbeSe Philip: Beyond the Limits of Language
M. NourbeSe Philip’s poetry begins at the limits of language. Taking on colonial, racial, and gendered violence and the ways in which they have and continue to rupture language, Philip’s oeuvre opens with an attempt to “redeem” the English language before considering the possibility that “murdering” it is necessary for the language to fit her tongue. Experiments in sound and form and with found-texts animate Philip’s poetry and take it beyond the limits of language. In this SloPo session, we will focus on poems from two of Philip’s books—She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks (1989) and Zong! (2008)—and consider the questions and possibilities of redemption and murder in each. There will be two optional Zoom sessions, one in which we will discuss Philip’s poetry on its own and another in which we discuss it in conversation with two essays she has written on the politics of language.
Session 2: February 15-24
Irene Torra Mohedano on Álvaro Alarcón Martín
Álvaro Alarcón Martín: The machines celebrate at last!
Álvaro Alarcón Martín (Madrid, Spain, 1997) is a poet and engineer who plays with language while working night shifts surrounded by machines. In the quiet company of said machines, and alongside the works of many of our favorite ModPo poets, Álvaro wrote his opera prima (which has already earned him the International Poetry Price Antonio Gala). Moving between Spanish words and US poetic forms, Álvaro explores the social issues of his generation while fearlessly experimenting with poetic genres and structures. His poetry is playful, political, mechanical, satirical… and surprises the reader line after line. In this mini-course, we will discuss a selection of poems and explore the ways the machines and the humanities can dance together and make us sing along. In addition to discussions in the ModPo forums, this SloPo group will have one Zoom session (date TBD), with Álvaro joining us.
Session 3: March 8-17
erica kaufman on Anne Waldman
Anne Waldman: “Think for yourself with public mouth”
In this SloPo session, we’ll immerse ourselves in the work of Anne Waldman, a mainstay of the main ModPo syllabus. Waldman appears in Week Six of the main syllabus, Beat Week, and we’ve had many a rollicking conversation about her timeless “Rogue State.” In this mini-course, we’ll look at a small sampling of poetry from Waldman’s enormous oeuvre beginning with the seminal “Fast Speaking Woman” (1974) and culminating in recent work from Archivist Scissors (2025). Guiding our readings of the poems, will be short excerpts from Waldman’s prose focused on the idea of “Outrider” poetics and pedagogy. In addition to forum discussions, there will be one optional zoom session.
Session 4: April 19-28
Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué on Douglas Kearney
Douglas Kearney: Jazz, Collage, Riot
In this SloPo course, we take on the multi-modal work of contemporary American poet Douglas Kearney. Between poems inspired by the experiments of jazz, unreadable visual collages, and riotously funny/riotously angry works, Kearney has developed one of the most varied and exciting bodies of work around race, form, and gender. We’ll move chronologically through pieces from each of Kearney’s nine poetry books and records, with one optional Zoom meeting to convene as a group.
