Saturdays, January 18th, 25th, and February 1st 2025, 1:00PM - 3:00PM
Meetings will take place in the Poetry Center's Alumni Room, Room 205; with a limit of 12 students. General registration will open on Tuesday, December 17th at 10:00AM.
Geopoetics is a three week course focused on the poetic possibility of writing and reading the planet. Our focus on geopoetics, as in geo-logy and geo-graphy, will situate us as writers within a broader field of ecopoetics, and with a deep focus on minerals, land, and place. We will write through time scales of personal and planetary memory, and think through Arizona-based histories and futures of resource extraction.
In this course, we will read poetry, engage in Yoko Ono and CA Conrad’s poetic rituals, watch films, and look critically at “land art” through the lens of artists like Raul Zurita and Beverly Buchanan. Through this class, we will also encounter writing and archival material about copper mining in Arizona through the events of the 1917 Bisbee Deportation and the ongoing struggle for Indigenous land and sovereignty in Oak Flat.
How might reading, writing, and making with the earth extend what Ursula K. LeGuin calls, “the meter of eternity”? How might fossil, tectonic plate, and planet show us new spatial and temporal scales of poetic possibility? Participants with all amounts of writerly and artistic experience are welcome.