Cut-Up Poetry
Taught by Abigail Green-Dove
Abigail Green-Dove is currently getting her Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford (yes, that Oxford). She lives in Prospect Heights when she’s not in school (it’s low-residency, so she’s also writing on the side for a website about male sexual health to make drinking and subway money). She earned her BA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College in Boston and spent a year studying at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Prague, Czech Republic and Boulder, Colorado.
Abigail has had her poetry published in The Chaffey Review, Poetry Quarterly, and Forth Magazine. When she’s not working on her novel for Oxford, writing poetry for fun, or writing 300-word pieces on erections, she likes to practice her procrastination techniques by reading way too many blog posts. She originally hails from Los Angeles, but please don’t hold that against her.
Blog: http://thegreendove.blogspot.com/
When you cut into the present the future leaks out.
-William S. Burroughs
Nothing sucks more when trying to write than being faced with a blank piece of paper. In this class, you’ll create a poem without ever having to face a blank sheet. Our focus for the evening will be cut-up poetry, made famous by one William S. Burroughs when he wasn’t busy shooting people during drunken games of “William Tell.”
Together we will learn about the history of the cut-up technique, from those crazy Dadaists in Switzerland to Burroughs and later feminist poet Dodie Bellamy. All you need to participate is some old newspapers or magazines, a pen, paper, and scissors, if you’re feeling wild. We’ll do some writing and then have time to read and give some constructive advice to our fellow poets.
Are you a published poet or a complete novice? Either way, this class is for you. You’ll walk in with nothing and walk out with a poem, plus some future pub quiz knowledge, and the definition of the word aleatory.
(Class size: 12)
