Description course: Language as Action Narrating Change

"...When we discovered we ourselves were the language..." -- Valzyna Mort James Baldwin said that the job of writers is to work to change the language. And that it takes a long time to do that. Writer/activist/educator June Jordan said: "We worry words. That's what poets do." In her poem "Belarusian 1, Valzyna Mort wrote: "...when we discovered we ourselves were the language..." Poet Adrienne Rich wrote : "...the moment of change is the only poem." In this class we will study and engage language as a live organism, poetry as a site for discovery. We will read poems mostly by contemporary and newly published poets living in the U.S (not necessarily identifying themselves as "of" the U.S.) and writing in English, who are, in my estimation, shifting culture, "becoming the language." The works we will engage disrupt conventional labels and terminologies, dare to re define, open up new spaces of human and poetic ecologies. The poets whose work we will explore include Ross Gay (National Book Award nominee, permaculturist, teacher), Aracelis Girmay, Michaela Moscaliuc, Yesenia Montilla, Tina Chang, Li Young Lee, Tracy K. Smith, Natalie Diaz.... and work the students bring to the class to share. The class will also write and share their writing. In April, national poetry month, the class will participate in "30/30" -- writing a poem a day and sharing it with the group. Guest poets to the class, tentatively, include: Tina Chang, Mihaela Moscali, Alexis De Veaux, Yesenia Montilla.