Erasure Poetry Workshop with Anna Leahy

We’ll begin by looking at examples of different types of erasure poetry, including the work of Jen Bervin, who erases by lightening or sewing over text, and Sonja Johanson, who uses seeds, petals, and spices to cover text. We’ll discuss the relationship among erasure poetry, found poetry, and concepts like copyright, redaction, censorship, ignorance, and restorative justice. Then, we’ll turn familiar types of written texts into new versions by using various methods of erasure such as white-out, black-out, cover-up, and/or cut-out. We’ll use a variety of sources, perhaps Wikipedia entries, magazine artices, and classic novels. Participants can work individually or in pairs, and we can try an exquisite corpse erasure as a group collaboration. While it’s possible that wonderful original poems will emerge, the workshop’s focus will be on having fun with language, shaking up our reading and writing practices, and making something new without starting from scratch.

Class meets in person Tuesday, July 22, 1 – 2:30 pm.

Class size: minimum 5, maximum 12.

Teaching Artist: Anna Leahy’s books include the poetry collections Gloss, What Happened Was:, Aperture, and If in Some Cataclysm and the nonfiction book Tumor. Her work has won top awards from Mississippi Review, Los Angeles Review, Ninth Letter, and Dogwood and appears at Aeon, Atlanta Review, The Atlantic, Bennington Review, BuzzFeed, Poetry, Scientific American, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She edits Tab Journal and has been a fellow at MacDowell and the American Library in Paris. More at https://amleahy.com.