Creative Writing: Poetry and Freedom

ENG 273.003

Tues/Thurs
10:30 – 11:45

Creative Writing: Poetry and Freedom

 

Course Description

The mission statement on PEN America’s website claims that they stand “at the intersection of literature and human rights” and “champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world.” But what does this actually mean? In this class, we’ll examine the intersection of poetry and issues of human rights, especially where freedom is concerned. Is poetry a pastime of freedom, or does poetry itself enact and constitute freedom? We’ll read instances of such intersections locally, nationally, and abroad, while engaging critically with the ways both “poetry” and “freedom” have been defined—sometimes in contradiction. We will also be creating our own poetry, and considering what it means to engage with world events from inside the process of an art form.

 

Class Requirements and Expectations (assignments & attendance/participation)

This class will begin from a hopeful albeit skeptical approach to the topics at hand. In order to critically examine how different bodies around the world have defined “poetry” and “freedom,” we will also have to develop our own working definitions of these terms. This means class participation and discussion will be essential to our process of meaning-making, and we will pave the road together as a class. Attendance, therefore, will be mandatory.

This is a writing intensive course, so students will be writing, revising, and reviewing each other’s poems throughout the semester. These poems will be compiled into a final portfolio with a critical reflection. The assigned readings will also prepare students to engage in their own research for an essay (with a drafting and in-class workshopping process worked in) contending with one core aspect of our class topic as it pertains to a poet or political movement of the students’ choosing.

 

Required Texts

Trask, Haunani-Kay. Night Is a Sharkskin Drum. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002.

Šrut, Pavel. Trans. Ema Katrovas. Papírové Polobotky: Paper Shoes. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2009.

Forché, Carolyn. Against Forgetting: Twentieth-century Poetry of Witness. New York: W.W. Norton, 1993. — (excerpts, to be made available as PDF)

Various online sources, such as: PEN America, Guernica Magazine, and Split This Rock.