Magelungsvägen 170
Poetry without an author?
Wednesday, 22 October, 18.00 h.
Many poets have grappled with the constraining form of the self, looking for ways of breaking open the individual voice of the author to a communal chorus. In the 1960s, Anne Waldman and Bernadette Mayer conducted collective writing experiments at the legendary Poetry Project at St Mark’s Church in New York. Later, Lyn Hejinian would attempt to entirely erase her own agency in creating poems, forming her book The Fatalist out of quotes from emails and letters she had received. More recently, SJ Fowler gathers multilingual poets on stage, each of whom puts the same poem through Google translate from its original into their own language; they all then read these multiple versions of the same poem over each other.
In this workshop, run by poet Ivanna Baranova and poetry theorist Elliot C. Mason, we build on these experiments in collective writing, asking whether we can create a poem together that entirely abolishes our individual claims to authorship. Is it possible for a poem to emerge without a singular voice that attaches it to its creator? Is it possible for us to speak in the singular voice of a chorus? In these times of genocide and emergent fascism, it is more important than ever to practice and enact ways of collective survival. In this workshop, we experiment with poetic ways of doing just that.
The workshop is in English. Everyone is welcome. No experience in reading or writing poetry is necessary.