Workshop: The Thing Not Encounter: Writing Constellated Poems with Yongyu Chen
A Nathalie Léger short story proposes that if there is an aleph on this earth, a point in space which contains all the points, it is found in the inconceivable, hypermobile figure one mundanely calls an encounter. If encounter as posed by Léger is, however, already full of absences, inclusive of something like
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Rauschenberg knocking on de Kooning s door (hoping he wasn t there), what is the thing not encounter? Would it be even better? This class is in two parts. The first, discussion-based, explores what that thing might be that is not an encounter. We will speculate on this idea and the above questions via excerpts from writers like Hannah Black, Heather Love, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Alice Notley. The second part of the class features a generative exercise centered on clepsydrae, or water clocks. Putting into play principles discussed earlier, we ll write poems that emerge from a constellated set of mostly textual inspirations, including an excerpt from Giorgio Agamben s The Highest Poverty (on the introduction of water clocks to a cenobium) and a Laurie Torres song called Clessidra (as remixed by More Eaze). In doing so, we ll consider how we might construct improvisatory archives to write from, and how poems might include information of distant registers. In-Person 3-Hour Workshop | Saturday | December 5 | 2-5pm ET This in-person workshop will take place at Poets House in the Kunitz Conference Room on the second floor. Elevator access is available. All are welcome, space is limited. A limited number of need-based scholarships are available. Please email support@poetshouse.org with any questions. By attending or participating in this program, you agree to abide by our Community Agreement. About the Educator: Yongyu Chen is the author of Perennial Counterpart, published by Nightboat. Their poems appear in The Baffler, DUCK, Paris Review, and Washington Square Review. They received a PhD in Film Visual Studies from Harvard.