Poetry on Page and Stage: Spoken Word Po

Poetry on Page and Stage offers students an introduction to the craft of poetry with a focus on the transition from textual performance to oral performance. As a hybrid of creative writing and performance workshops, students will spend half the semester focusing on the written word. Students will perform weekly exercises to practice and explore traditional forms, discuss predecessors of American performance poetry, and offer critical exegesis on each other’s work. The second half of the class will be spent in performance. We will study current spoken word performances, voice training techniques, and intersections between acting and poetic theories. Students will critique each other’s individual deliveries, collaborate on group performances, and ultimately construct an hour long performance synthesizing a semester’s worth of work. Readings will include such authors as Sonia Sanchez, Bushra Rehman, Franny Choi, Morgan Parker, and Ntosake Shange.