The Long Poem Workshop

(January 23 - March 27, 2013)

Posted in Courses, Jay MillAr

Duration: 10 Weeks (30 hours), JAN 23 – MAR 27, 6:30-9:30 pm, (Wednesday Evenings)

Location: 192 Spadina Avenue, Toronto. (Just North of Queen)

Capacity: 10 students

** This workshop is now full. **

If you would like to be put on the waiting list just use our contact form here.

And you have to go into the serial poem not knowing what the hell you’re doing. That’s the first thing. You have to be tricked into it. It has to be some path that you’ve never seen on a map before. I think all of my books as far as they’re successful have just followed the bloody path to see where it goes, and sometimes it doesn’t go anywhere. — Jack Spicer, 1965

Led by poet and publisher Jay MillAr, this 10-week workshop will allow students to investigate the trends of the “genre” of the North American Long (or “Serial”) Poem, with particular emphasis on reading and discussing Canadian Long Poems. Provided with a safe haven from undesirable influences such as the marketplace and the academy (except, as Philip Whalen suggested, in the strictest sense of the word: academy: a walking grove of trees), students can explore the possibilities a Long Poem form has.

Required Text: The Long Poem Anthology, Sharon Thesen, ed (Talonbooks)

Course Work: Students are required to come to the first class prepared to share and discuss with the group an idea they have for a long or serial poem. All subsequent classes will then be run beginning with reading and discussion of work in The Long Poem Anthology, followed by sharing and discussing original writing. Successes and problems that arise in relation to the student’s ongoing work and the original idea presented in Class One will be of particular interest. The notion of “failure” will be addressed throughout the course, especially in the context of the Spicer quote provided at the beginning of this course description. Students will be continually asked to evaluate whether or not they are following the path their original idea projected for them.

If you would like to be put on the waiting list just use our contact form here.

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