The Ugly/Beautiful: Poetry Workshop
General
Course Long Title
The Ugly/Beautiful: Poetry Workshop
Subject Code
CCRW
Course Number
266
Department(s)
Academic Level
UG - Undergraduate
Description
The Ugly/Beautiful: Poetry Workshop
Disability justice activist Mia Mingus once posed the challenge: "Where is the Ugly in you? What is it trying to teach you?" In "The Ugly/Beautiful" creative writing workshop, we will read and write poetry that confronts the gritty matter of the ugly -- the foul, the undesirable, the profane, the abject. In other words, objects and subjects that gross us out, compel us to turn away. Rather than refuse the ugly, we will train our gaze on it and discover the fine line between love and repulsion, what's feared and exalted. We will trouble our ideas of what's ugly and what's considered beautiful.
Reading for this class will include poets who write unflinchingly about the dangers of (trans)feminine beauty, desirability and disabled bodies, meditations on death, cum and apathy, the body on the edge of survival, and decay, such as Sandra Lim's The Loveliest Grotesque, Kim Hyesoon's Autobiography of Death, Jasmine Reid's Deus Ex Nigrum, Zef Lisowski's Girl Work, Vievee Francis's Forest Primeval, and Monica McClure's Tender Data. Students will regularly turn in poems that we will discuss in workshop, a constructive place for community feedback, and revise these works as part of a final poetic project.
Disability justice activist Mia Mingus once posed the challenge: "Where is the Ugly in you? What is it trying to teach you?" In "The Ugly/Beautiful" creative writing workshop, we will read and write poetry that confronts the gritty matter of the ugly -- the foul, the undesirable, the profane, the abject. In other words, objects and subjects that gross us out, compel us to turn away. Rather than refuse the ugly, we will train our gaze on it and discover the fine line between love and repulsion, what's feared and exalted. We will trouble our ideas of what's ugly and what's considered beautiful.
Reading for this class will include poets who write unflinchingly about the dangers of (trans)feminine beauty, desirability and disabled bodies, meditations on death, cum and apathy, the body on the edge of survival, and decay, such as Sandra Lim's The Loveliest Grotesque, Kim Hyesoon's Autobiography of Death, Jasmine Reid's Deus Ex Nigrum, Zef Lisowski's Girl Work, Vievee Francis's Forest Primeval, and Monica McClure's Tender Data. Students will regularly turn in poems that we will discuss in workshop, a constructive place for community feedback, and revise these works as part of a final poetic project.