The Great Smokies Writing Program: Summer 2011

The Community Writing Program of the University of North Carolina Asheville

Getting the Muse Back into Gear:

A Poetry Workshop

Jeff Davis

(Lang 371, 1 credit hour)

Having one of those months when the Muse isn’t returning your phone calls? Let’s look at how you can use the procedures of a Black Mountain College master and the French Oulipeans to open new avenues of communication with her. Black Mountain poet Jonathan Williams explored “found language” and aleatoric strategies for the creation of text, both powerful tools. We’ll investigate Williams’ use of these strategies, and use them to create our own poetry. The writers of the Oulipo workshop also developed a range of tools to bring new life to the writing process. Their strategies explored more systematic approaches to text. We’ll explore several of these strategies and use them to fold, spindle, and mutilate texts, and so appropriate them as our own.

Jeff Davis’s book Natures was selected by Poet Laureate Katherine Stripling Byer as a North Carolina Notable Book for 2006, and featured on the Laureate’s web site. He attended UNC-Greensboro’s MFA program in creative writing, studied with Robert Creeley at the State University of New York at Buffalo. His poems have appeared in Lillabulero, Iron, Asheville Poetry Review, the Nantahala Review, and other little magazines. His books include Transits of Venus (2005), and Natures: Selected Poems, 1972 – 2005 (2006). Since 2005 he has hosted the radio program Wordplay, which celebrates poets and writers of creative prose; it’s now available each Sunday at 5:00 PM via AshevilleFM.org, and a catalog of the show archive is posted at http://www.naturespoetry.blogspot.com.

Classes meet Wednesday evenings, 6:00-8:30pm (June 8,15,29 and, July 6,13) at Montford Books & More, 31 Montford Avenue.

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