Underworld Poetics: Writing from Other Dimensions
Office hours: Th 1-3 pm & by appt. / PDL B102-B
sign up: https://www.wejoinin.com/sheets/kabkl
Visionary poets can stand in strange relation to the world. Some come from or speak from another world. Some recount travel between layers of reality, or report enhanced encounters with animals, plants, and other beings. This class explores ways some writers cross into and write out of other dimensions—including punk clubs, gay underworlds, subway tunnels, fleabag hotels, outer space, undersea civilizations, angelic and demonic realms. We will read and discuss poetry and supporting texts, attending to writers' perception and cultivation of more-than-human entanglements. Class writings will probe poetic relations to natural and social environments. Students will keep illustrated journals of their otherworldly engagements, and improvise an underworld together.