Poetry & Experimental Fiction

This course is designed to introduce students to creative
writing, as well as to the art of reading as a writer, with a keen view to
borrowing and thievery. We will read poetry and fiction that is at once serious
in content and playful in form and comes out of traditions of experimentation
(avant-garde, oulipo, etc.).  Classes
will be devoted to close readings of texts, to active experimentation, and,
late in each half of the course, to student workshops.

Readings will include chapbooks published by Tinfish Press
and available on-line, as well as short works of fiction by the Danish writer,
Simon Frueland (trans. K.E. Semmel) and by Michael Kimball. Experiments will be
generated out of lists by Bernadette Mayer and The Spoonbill Generator, among
other sites.

Students will write five poems and revise them, as well as
two short fictions, with revisions. Class participation and attendance are
crucial to making this class successful.

Texts: Tinfish Retro Chapbooks, and other poems; Milk, by Simon Frueland (Santa Fe
Writers’ Project), and Michael Kimball
Writes Your Life Story on a Postcard
(Mudlicious Press).