Introduction to Literature: Creative Writing
Split Tongues: Writing the Multilingual Poem
Instructor: Amanda Huynh (she/her)
This course will study the historical contexts, traditions, and craft of multilingual poetics in America. Together, we will examine the choices poets made in completing their poetry collections such as the use of emblematic devices, embodied devices, and translational devices. In addition, we will connect the presence of code-meshing in relation to social movements so we will be prepared to talk about our own processes.
Students will read and discuss multilingual poetry (poems that have the presence of English and a non-English language) that will span over a wide variety of non-English languages (Arabic, Chamoru, Hawaiian, Japanese, Korean, Pidgin, Spanish, Vietnamese, and others). Previous knowledge of non-English languages is not required for this class.
Students will be encouraged to write their own multilingual poems throughout the semester and will participate in workshops. Students will work on their own poetry; each week will include a generative in-class prompt to be developed further by the student. By the end of the course, each student should expect to complete a mini chapbook of their own poetry.
Texts: Pdfs available via Laulima; one multilingual poetry collection of student’s choosing (to be decided on by the third week of class)