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Poems make things happen. That’s something I hear a lot. It’s something I even say a lot! Of course that’s not always the case. And that’s a kind of liberation. In this class we’ll investigate poems that use various strategies to create a space of rest, contemplation, and (in some cases) complete removal from certain  aspects of predatory capitalism. We will mainly focus on Bernadette Mayer’s Midwinter Day but also on some other texts. And, of course, we will write a lot. How can being where we are in poems allow a kind of new poetics to unfold, be it a poetics of resistance or of deep deep repose. My hope is you leave with a year’s worth of possibilities. We will workshop and be in community in a gorgeous and inspiring space.

This class is a conversation, a laboratory, and you are welcome and, indeed, essential to its life force. Come prepared to talk, write, question, dream, and leap! I will provide a reader of poems and would ask that you purchase Mayer’s A Midwinter’s Day. 

This class is open to students of all experience levels. 

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Instructor: Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart, Apocalyptic Swing (a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize), and Rocket Fantastic, winner of the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. Calvocoressi is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including a Stegner Fellowship and Jones Lectureship from Stanford University; a Rona Jaffe Woman Writer's Award; a Lannan Foundation residency in  Marfa, TX; the Bernard F. Conners Prize from The Paris Review; and a residency from the Civitella di Ranieri Foundation, among others. Calvocoressi's poems have been published or are forthcoming in numerous magazines and journals including The Baffler, The New York Times, POETRY, Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Tin House, and The New Yorker. Calvocoressi is an Editor at Large at Los Angeles Review of Books, and Poetry Editor at Southern Cultures. Calvocoressi teaches at UNC Chapel Hill and lives in Old East Durham, NC, where joy, compassion, and social justice are at the center of their personal and poetic practice.

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