Poetry & Prose

What surprising roles can research play in helping to generate new ideas or complement the telling of our own personal life stories? In this five-week class we will explore readings and prompts that utilize research in lyrical and innovative ways—sometimes as a seed that launches a surprising investigation, sometimes as the metaphorical connective tissue between memories of something unrelated, sometimes as structural scaffolding. Looking to journalism, ethnography, archives, found material, and our own repositories of memory and observation, we will explore a range of tactics and exercises for employing research in work. Whether writing poems, “braided” essays, or narrative nonfiction, participants will leave with a toolbox of techniques to utilize research for both inspiration and information, as well as a draft of a longer project…