Crisis, Craft & Imagination
In moments of crisis, language often fails us. As writers, what do we make of the limits of our craft and to what other forms might we turn when confronted with crises—societal; personal; collective—that exceed linguistic representation?
Throughout this course, we will enter into a sustained consideration of the confluence between language and image, growing curious about that which emerges when the two forms conspire.
In describing the process behind his book-length collage Poem Bitten By a Man, poet Brian Teare suggests his task is “to pursue meaning through its displacement. To understand change, remarkable or hidden. To go on—”
It is in this latter directive where our class will begin. When we reach the edges of language, how go on? We will cultivate an imaginative mindset that eschews the rigid dogma of genre and adopt an expansive approach that values multiplicity over singularity. Reimagining how language and image behave on and off the page, we will study and practice forms that invite us into the margin—that liminal space where boundaries and genres dissolve to reveal an art that asks us into a primary space of imagining and making.
We will consider how forms of collage might enhance, complicate, and deepen our writing practice. Our studies will include expansive forms of making, including ekphrasis, graffiti, public art, letterpress, collage, and printmaking. In addition to language, we will turn to ink, to color, to the cathartic practice of cutting and pasting—reminded anew that the underneath is as valuable as the seen and the margin as vital as the center.
We will seek out language and image beyond the classroom, visiting local galleries, public art spaces, and diverse sites of linguistic and imagistic potential.
Some of the primary questions Teare asks across his book-length collage include 1) how can we make language more—a dimension that holds & meets multiple demands: love, work, death, & art? and 2) How do we say what can’t be seen? Our class will further this line of questioning and pursue a related query: how do we portray what can’t be said?
We will examine crisis through the collage of our singular and shared experiences, considering the most personal intimacies of mind alongside the most public horrors of empire and state.
Put simply, we will entangle ourselves in two of the primary questions every writer must ask:
How does language fail us? How does it save us?